The first after-the-event insurance scheme, LawAssist, is being launched in Northern Ireland by Greystoke Legal Services this week. The launch coincides with a seminar on the future of legal costs insurance at the Law Society of Northern Ireland in Belfast this Wednesday.
The Law Society is to consider the creation of specialist accreditation schemes for legal aid work in a defensive move designed to steal a march on the legal aid board. At a council meeting last week, vice-president Phillip Sycamore urged the profession to look at setting up accreditation schemes for family, criminal, employment, housing and […]
The Law Society has agreed to spend up to £2.5m more on the troubled Regis computer project, as well as to appoint a further 61 members of staff. The allocation of funds for phase four of the Regis project, now called Road (Regis Office Automation Development), was passed with little debate by the society council […]
Since the Middle Ages, there has been an official in the English justice system responsible for looking after the interests of children, the mentally ill, prisoners and others who cannot defend their legal rights. For the past 110 years this role has been taken by the Official Solicitor to the Supreme Court, appointed by the […]
Eversheds’ Leeds office has suffered a spate of departures from its ranks of senior litigators, who have left to join rival firms in Leeds. Six solicitors, all said to be big billers, have left or handed in their notice at the firm. Three of them have joined the Leeds office of Irwin Mitchell. James Love […]
Dibb Lupton Alsop in Birmingham has poached Graeme Bradley, head of Eversheds’ Birmingham construction team and his assistant Rebecca Roth-Biester, soon after picking up five members of Edge & Ellison’s commercial team. Bradley said his move was prompted by “the prospect of building the best construction team in the Midlands”. Ian Jolie, managing partner of […]
The Law Lords have given leave for appeals on behalf of victims and relatives of victims of the Indian Airlines Airbus crash at Bangalore, India, in 1990 in respect of a dispute over where the claims should be heard. In April last year the Commercial Court dismissed an application by Airbus Industrie to confine the […]
LEADING tax partner Anthony Davis has quit City firm Lovell White Durrant to join Big Six accountancy firm Ernst & Young in April as tax partner in the financial services group. Davis will be joining the firm at partner level, and consequently will not be practising as a solicitor. Ernst & Young has said it […]
Last year media and entertainment mega-deals had to compete for editorial space with less stellar transactions, as the sector moved towards predator consolidation and diversification at all levels. The year began with the £3bn MAI acquisition of United News and Media. The merger created one of the biggest media combines in the UK and one […]
John Haydn Hughes, 47, admitted 1978, practising at material times as an assistant solicitor with Berwyn Davies & Co, Aberdare, struck off and ordered to pay £1,070 costs. Allegations substantiated that, acting as a solicitor, he gave undertaking he was not entitled to give, drew cheques on his firm’s office account without authority, fraudulently completed […]
A contradiction lies at the heart of the Law Society’s democratic structure. In two successive years, the profession has elected a president on a specific programme. And yet the president has no formal constitutional power to implement manifesto pledges. Indeed, the president’s ability to persuade the Law Society Council to back his programme is potentially […]
As High street legal aid solicitors, we are disturbed by the implications for access to justice caused by the latest huge increases in court fees imposed without notice by the Lord Chancellor’s Department. One example is the overnight increase in the issue fee for a divorce from £80 to £150. People on income support are […]