The Law Society should seek outside opinions from experienced solicitors rather than counsel, under a motion adopted by the council last week. If an opinion is sought from counsel by staff the president or another Law Society officeholder must be notified as soon as possible.
Perhaps it is a measure of the success of the Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre (ESPC) that the taxi driver not only drove me straight to the door but double parked and went inside for a look. Every day 8,000 people join him and march into the smart, spacious central offices to view over 6,000 properties, […]
The Law Society has been slammed as a “dinosaur” by the Solicitors Property Group (SPG), which says it will set up its own property shop rather than wait for conveyancing regulations to be relaxed. In a closed meeting last Thursday the Law Society Council agreed to send out a consultation paper on scrapping restrictive conveyancing […]
THE Law Society has successfully fended off a £3m compensation fund claim after arguing that a Finnish company acted negligently when it trusted a sole practitioner to look after the money. Ingman Foods launched a judicial review against the Law Society after the Solicitors Compensation Fund refused to compensate any of the money the company […]
Three of eleven partners appointed world wide by US firm Squire Sanders & Dempsey are based in the Prague office. Prague is the firm’s second largest European operation with over 70 staff concentrating largely on telecommunications privatisation and financing work. One of the three new appointees is Dr. Lubos Tichy, the former president of the […]
The Bar Council has appointed Michael Scott, an army major general, to become its first lay complaints commissioner. Major general Scott will take up the post on his retirement from the army in April. Under the Bar Council’s new complaints system the commissioner will consider all complaints lodged with the Bar Council. Changes to the […]
Companies doing business in Europe and their advisers are eagerly awaiting to hear the future of merger control regulation in Europe. One of the key questions has been whether the present threshold above which mergers have to be notified to the EC’s competition directorate, DGIV, will be lowered. In November, an amendment to reduce thresholds, […]
Sinclair Roche & Temperley has paid £30,000 to a former assistant solicitor in settlement of a sex discrimination claim and is facing action from two former secretaries for alleged sexual discrimination and unfair dismissal. Sinclair Roche agreed in August last year to pay a £30,000 out of court settlement to Tania Merrin, who had worked […]
Stuart Knowles is a partner at healthcare law practice The Lewington Partnership. A lot of ink has been spilt recently discussing the correct formula to apply in calculating the multiplier in major personal injury (PI) cases. But most people have missed the real point. Following the recent decision of the Court of Appeal in Thomas […]
Tony Blair has stepped into the debate over the Government’s decision to increase civil court fees by employing a procedural device to get the issue debated in Parliament. It is, however, highly unlikely that the Labour leader will be able to use the device, known as “laying a prayer”, to force a vote on the […]
A survey of 120 service sector businesses from the top 1,000 UK companies by NOP on behalf of Theodore Goddard concludes that “Brussels red tape is drowning British business”. The report, entitled The People Business: A New Legal Frontier, makes the claim on the basis that despite 800 new regulations from Brussels last year alone, […]
Amendments to the Police Bill accepted by the Lords last week are inadequate, Liberty director John Wadham said at a Law Society briefing on the Bill in the Commons last week. Prior to the amendments, the Bill allowed a chief constable to authorise bugging operations and use information obtained as evidence. But Labour’s amendment says […]