SOLICITORS are too slack about collecting fees, say their financial directors. The indictment comes after the release of a study that says law firms could save millions of pounds a year by reducing their bank interest charges through better management of work in progress and credit control. According to the latest study from the Centre […]
THE FAILED High Court appeal by engineering company T&N over asbestos-related illness claims will have implications for similar cases, says a lawyer involved in the hearing. The Court of Appeal last week upheld a decision awarding damages to two victims of asbestos-related disease. It ruled T&N should have known asbestos dust could cause injury to […]
Number of claims asylum seekers can make R v the Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Onibiyo (1996) CA (Sir Thomas Bingham MR, Roch LJ and Swinton Thomas LJ) 28/1/9Summary: Political asylum seekers may make more than one application but it is for the Home Secretary to decide whether an application is […]
As one of our PI Settlement notes last week indicates – a £158,000 CICB pay-out to attack victim Martin Davies – criminal injury compensation awards can be extremely high. Other than Green Form consultation, legal aid is not available to back CICB claims but the involvement of solicitors and counsel in the Davies case leaves […]
16 April is also the date set for the start of a major Queens Bench test case in which eight plaintiffs are suing over allegations that they were infected, or potentially infected, with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after being given growth hormones unlawfully derived from the pituitary glands of dead people. The cases are the tip of […]
David Cochran, 51, admitted 1982, practising at material times in partnership as McKenzie & Chester, Tiverton, Devon, refused restoration to the roll after voluntarily removing his name in 1992. Cochran also ordered to pay £3,643 costs. Tribunal said Cochran had been accused of failure to comply with accounting rules, acting for his client when his […]
Each week, I read with mounting dread the latest developments surrounding the Law Society in your magazine. I keep hoping there will be some end in sight to the bickering but it never seems to happen. The damage to the profession’s image will be irreparable if something is not done soon. For that reason I […]
Laurence Graham advised Taverners Trust on its formation and Offer for Subscription to raise up to £40m in conjunction with its listing on the London Stock Exchange. The new investment trust is to be managed by Abtrust Fund Managers. Norton Rose advised Greig Middleton & Co, sponsor to the issue.
The take up of higher courts rights of audience by solicitors is disappointing in terms of the number. But a steady increase is inevitable, particularly, I suspect, among those solicitors who are involved in criminal legal aid work. I would be the first to accept that the profitability of a one-off appearance in the local […]
I am sorry to see from Mr Ellingsworth’s letter in your issue of 12 March 1996 that he has a low regard for solicitors in private practice. No doubt there are some who deserve this. However, for the most part he is, I hope, wrong. Certainly my colleagues and I – when lecturing on professional […]
Claire Grayston was born in 1960, and currently lives and works in London, where she is head of corporate finance at Lewis Silkin. What was your first job? Marks & Spencer Saturday girl. What was your first ever salary as a lawyer? £3,750. What would you have done if you hadn’t become a lawyer? Starved. […]
In his Access to Justice report, Lord Woolf said: “The key problems facing civil justice today are cost, delay and complexity.” The courts and the Government have long displayed an ambivalent attitude towards delay. Lord Woolf identified the cause as the lack of any “judicial responsibility for managing individual cases of the overall administration of […]