London and south Wales firm Morgan Bruce is cashing in on its health service connections by launching a specialist service for the drugs industry. The service is based at the practice’s Fleet Street office and is headed by its new partner and pharmaceutical law specialist Anthony Warnock-Smith. Warnock-Smith has joined the practice from Sanofi Winthrop, […]
The Israeli-Palestinian peace process will not be stalled by the apparently hawkish new right wing Likud government of Israel, said the lawyer who brokered peace with the PLO. Joel Singer, who conducted the secret Oslo negotiations with PLO officials and drafted the resulting historic agreement on self-government for Palestinians, was speaking at the launch of […]
A BARRISTER’S allegations that a set of chambers subjected her to a campaign of racial discrimination have been described variously as as “scandalous, frivolous or vexatious” by a county court judge. At Central London County Court last week, Judge Quentin Edwards QC struck out Joy Okoye’s action against her former set, Staple Inn Chambers. Okoye, […]
East Yorkshire solicitors Heptonstalls has established a medical law department, headed by partner John Burman. A nurse will be employed to assist on medical issues and help manage medical case records. Burman serves on the Law Society Medical Negligence Panel.
Barristers practising in the field of family Law may be forgiven for thinking they have become insufficiently appreciated over the last year, wondering if the family Bar might go the way of the defended divorce. For over two decades, the family Bar has flourished. The scarcely justifiable clockwork routine work of undefendeds at £12.50 for […]
Lawyers are being consulted on how hearsay evidence should be introduced into civil proceedings in England and Wales. Recipients of a paper distributed by The Lord Chancellor’s Department are asked if there should be time limits on a party’s request for the oral evidence of hearsay, and how developments in computer evidence should be introduced […]
THE COMMERCIAL Property Department at City firm Norton Rose has been hit by a rash of defections among its senior assistant solicitor ranks. In the past few months, five of the department’s high ranking assistants have left to join other firms, with one of them joining as a partner. Three juniors have also handed in […]
Solicitors are being encouraged to take their local MPs out to lunch as part of an initiative to turn lawyers into successful parliamentary lobbyists. Addressing a mini conference “Getting the best out of Government”, organised by the South West regional office of the Law Society, Chris Philipsborn, the Law Society’s parliamentary officer, said effective local […]
Family and matrimonial law is an area on which the local regional Bar is often consulted. Although many family and matrimonial lawyers have been building up specialist expertise in this area of practice themselves, including qualifying as solicitor advocates, they still tend to use counsel for the more complex matters or where “pure advocacy” is […]
The Law Society is proposing to stop minute-taking and running the membership list for the Solicitors European Group. “The SEG is in an anomalous position,” said Jonathan Goldsmith, the society’s international head, pointing out that administrative support is normally only provided to groups that have difficulty gaining access to the profession, such as women, the […]
The Director of Public Prosecutions, Barbara Mills, has backed calls for national guidelines on the treatmentof children in court to be applied across the criminal justice system. At the launch last week of Children in Court, a report by Victim Support, Mills said there was a clear need for improvement in the way children giving […]
City firm Herbert Smith has won the contract against two other firms to advise the 14 electricity companies of England, Wales and Scotland on implementing full competition in 19 months time. Business customers of the privatised electricity companies are already able to choose their supplier, but from 1 April 1998 all 23 million individual customers […]