Buck v Farrell – QBD 10 March 1997 Claimant: Samantha Buck, Incident: Road traffic accident Injuries: Claimant suffered multiple fractures, lacerations to her face and major brain injury when struck down by motorbike as she crossed Northumberland Avenue in central London. Frontal lobe brain damage has left her permanently impaired and there has been severe […]
Chris Fogarty reports Bristol’s St John’s Chambers and law firm Bevan Ashford have pioneered an exchange programme between trainee solicitors and pupil barristers in a bid to improve communication and understanding between the two legal sectors. Under the scheme pupil barrister John Dickinson spent two days in March working in Bevan Ashford’s commercial litigation department, […]
A newly published guide is aiming to help solicitors practise so-called “active defence” in the face of new restrictions imposed by the Criminal Procedures and Investigations Act. The Act comes into force this week, despite a vociferous campaign by lawyers against its introduction. Under its provisions, it will be the responsibility of the police to […]
THE LAST time the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys looked at the electoral register, it found that three to four million people were missing from it. That many people could vote in a new government. They could keep the existing government in power, for that matter. These are the unknowns – the young, the […]
Theodore Goddard is to become the third large firm to lose its private client practice in a month. The department, comprising partners Joyce Smyth and Caroline Barkham and two assistants, will break away to set up on their own, Smyth Barkham, in Fleet Street on 1 May. Smyth said the split was amicable and that […]
The 1997 series of Solicitors for Independent Financial Advice (Sifa) financial services roadshows reached its climax in Scotland in March, with events in Dundee and Glasgow drawing large and enthusiastic audiences. In Dundee there were 90 delegates and in Glasgow 110, with firms travelling the length and breadth of Scotland for the events, from Tain, […]
More than 220 chambers are taking part in the Bar Council’s pupillage clearing house scheme Pach this year. Pach has proved controversial and last month it was revealed that 320 pupillages had been left unfilled by the scheme in its first year. But a working party headed by Stephen Kramer QC has made a series […]
The first of the six Baileys Shaw & Gillett partners who are not merging with Speechly Bircham has moved. John Gaymer, property partner at Baileys for 18 years, has joined Bracher Rawlins, which was formed by Baileys defectors Alan Bracher (commercial partner) and Simon Rawlins (litigation partner) three years ago. Fellow Baileys’ partner Laurence Kingswood […]
Commercial chambers Fountain Court is poised to join the growing band of sets with practice managers by appointing its first chambers director . And The Lawyer understands that Ric Martin, the partnership secretary at City firm Masons, will get the job. He is believed to have been chosen from 70 applicants for the post, after […]
Solicitor Peter Ievins is proof you can have it both ways. He is an independent sole practitioners, yet he need only take a few steps to consult one of six other legal colleagues at The Solicitors Chambers in Peterborough. Established in 1990 by Neil Davidson, Peterborough’s chambers pioneered an idea that Law Society president Tony […]
Around 50 barristers have formed the Bar Sports Law Group which aims in part to take games out of the courtroom and back on to the sports field. A meeting at 11 Stone Buildings two weeks ago saw juniors and silks from a range of chambers discuss the goals of the organisation, which has been […]
Foreign lawyers started flooding onto the Brussels market at the end of the 1980s. Several years on, many are wondering what they are still doing there. The eternal question remains: is a Brussels office necessary? From a purely commercial viewpoint, the answer would seem to be no, especially if, as one Brussels-based lawyer believes, only […]