LINCOLNSHIRE County Council has hired lawyers from Eversheds to do the legal work for the privatisation of two of its departments. The Nottingham office of the national firm will handle the “externalisation” of Translinc and Lincway. Lincway, the council’s road and grounds maintenance and construction division, has an annual turnover of £17 million. Translinc, which […]
Pinsent Curtis is on the look-out for five property lawyers at all levels in its Birmingham office after reporting its best year since the start of the recession. Brian Hopkinson, managing partner at the office, said its property department, which now has 10 partners, is one of the fastest-growing parts of the firm’s business after […]
As competition in the legal market increases, more and more firms are recognising the need to develop good management skills throughout their organisations to remain competitive. The ability of practices to manage themselves effectively at every level will be one of the critical factors in sorting out the winners from the losers as competition continues […]
Two West Midlands firms, Challinors and Lyon Clark, have merged to become one of the region’s 10 largest legal firms. Challinors Lyon Clark will be based in Edgbaston and have 20 partners – 13 of whom have come from Challinors. It is understood that West Bromwich-based Lyon Clark approached Challinors, the larger firm, earlier in […]
The legal expenses insurance market is bouncing back after years of uncertainty, disappointment and crippling losses for providers. Insurers got their fingers burnt in the early 1990s when they first offered comprehensive legal expenses insurance. The upshot was a flood of expensive court actions by people the insurers branded as litigious by nature. Many smaller […]
Probably the most senior barrister still practising in this country celebrated his 90th birthday last week. John Platts-Mills QC, called to the Bar in 1932, and now a tenant of Cloisters Chambers, defended his latest clients earlier this year. All eight defendants were acquitted. A veteran of the Great Train Robbery appeal in 1964-5, and […]
Judges are neither lenient “liberal pinkos” nor “bloodthirsty old men” handing out draconian sentences, declared Lord Bingham at his first press conference as Lord Chief Justice. The country’s most senior criminal judge, explaining his opposition to the extension of mandatory sentences as proposed by Home Secretary Michael Howard, said: “I don’t adhere to the view […]
The Government’s Private Finance Initiative has received yet another blow with an official admission that many of the planned schemes for building NHS hospitals with private money will not work. Many PFI lawyers blame the Government for rushing the initiative. The problem, said Andrew Neill, head of the NHS private finance unit, was that many […]
The majority of litigants who use the county court small claims procedure are satisfied with the way their cases are dealt with, according to a report, Small Claims Procedures in County courts in England and Wales, funded by the Economic & Social Research Council, the Lord Chancellor’s Department and the Office of Fair Trading. The […]
Nabarro Nathanson advised Anglo-French IT group Sema on a £100 million rights issue.
Clients want faster access to justice. So do all right-minded members of the legal profession. To that end, Lord Woolf’s final report after his two-year inquiry can only be good news. His aim is to reduce “inequalities, cost, delay and the complexity of civil litigation”. He is also hoping to introduce greater certainty on timescales […]
South Yorkshire firm Keeble Hawson Rodgers & Howe acted for Hepworth Properties, a subsidiary of Hepworth plc, in the sale of a substantial land holding in Godstone, Surrey, to Linden Homes. Pitmans in Reading acted for Linden Homes.