Two Brighton firms of solicitors have agreed to pay £55,000 in settlement of a negligence claim by a mother-of-two they represented in a claim against a local health authority. Julie Carey first instructed Davies & Co and later Fitzhugh Gates to sue Brighton Health Authority for medical negligence on the grounds that doctors at the […]
Nottinghamshire Law Society has launched a campaign aimed at raising public awareness of the risks of unqualified people marketing low-cost legal advice. The society, which represents 748 solicitors, is concerned about adverts by unqualified firms and claims assessors offering cheap will and probate and no win, no fee services. It has hired a local public […]
A large slice of Wedlake Bell’s client base has been shipped across the English Channel with the appointment of Quentin Spicer as senior partner of the firm’s Guernsey office. Spicer, a commercial property lawyer, transferred from Wedlake’s London office last week to replace Michael McKean, who opened the Guernsey office in 1986. McKean will remain […]
A LIVERPOOL firm is standing by a paralegal who was filmed playing in the same football team as a personal injury client who had just won damages after claiming he had been seriously injured tripping on a pavement. Howard Jackson & Co, which sponsors the team, said it believed its welfare adviser Steve Barton’s assertion […]
Firms will be asked to pay 7.5 per cent more to the Solicitors Indemnity Fund (SIF) this year than the original contribution asked for in August, following an embarrassing blunder by SIF staff. SIF chair Andrew Kennedy has admitted that its calculations failed to take into account extra discounts for low-risk work. He said they […]
Over 1,000 clients a month are choosing to fund cases under the “no win, no fee” agreements introduced 15 months ago. The next few years are likely to see a big increase in the role of conditional fees in civil litigation in personal injury, insolvency and human rights cases. But while the arrangements are still […]
Commentators have expressed surprise at the election as president of the American Bar Association of a lawyer who openly opposes abortion and advocates the death penalty. But Lee Cooper, a partner at Maynard Cooper & Gale in Birmingham, Alabama, says he wants to steer the ABA away from the social issues on which it has […]
Denton Hall has won a contract to privatise the telecoms industry in Serbia and says it could be the first international law firm to set up shop there. The six-figure contract will be carried out at an office in Belgrade, which could become permanent if it attracts enough business during the nine-month stay. Denton Hall […]
US law firm Squire Sanders & Dempsey has appointed finance and securities specialist Vladimira Papirnik to replace Richard Sterling Surrey as the managing partner of the firm’s Prague office. Sterling Surrey is moving to the London office. Since joining Squires’ international corporate practice in Prague, Papirnik has specialised in bank regulation and restructuring. She was […]
Bretherton Price Elgoods, the Cheltenham firm that acts for more than 5,000 members of the Transport & General Workers Union in the West Midlands region, has won its biggest-ever compensation claim for the union. The personal injury specialist firm negotiated an award of £580,000 for the claimant, a TGWU member who sought compensation from the […]
LAWYERS at Liverpool City Council who filmed a bogus knee injury victim playing football say they are constantly developing new tactics to stem a steady stream of false personal injury claims. Last month a Liverpool judge ordered amateur footballer Peter Hill to repay £11,000 damages which he won after claiming he injured his knee when […]
South Wales firm Hugh James claims to be the first in the country to launch free campus-based legal advice clinics for students and college staff in two South Wales colleges. But business has not been brisk at the first clinic that started at the beginning of the academic year, at Merthyr Tydfil College, which has […]