Commentary on the Woolf report has concentrated on changes in procedure, but Lord Woolf also looked at the structure of the civil courts and asked who is in charge of the civil courts system. The same question could be asked about the criminal courts. With Lord Woolf now appointed as Master of the Rolls and […]
A SACKED company director is suing London law firm Woodroffes for £825,000 over alleged negligence in its handling of his compensation claim. In a writ issued at the High Court, John Buchanan, of Farnham, Surrey, says he retained Woodroffes after he was sacked without notice as a director of conglomerate Sale Tilney in April 1993. […]
SJ Berwin & Co consultant Lord Clinton-Davis of Hackney has been elected a Fellow of King’s College London for his commitment to public service over the last four decades. Lord Clinton-Davis formed law firms Clintons and Clinton Davis & Co in the 1950s. He specialised in human rights and civil liberties. In 1989, he joined […]
Children will have better access to legal services following a successful bid for National Lottery funds by the Legal Centre for Children. Over the next three years, £98,000 will be donated to the Legal Centre for Children, the only provider of free legal advice on children’s rights in England and Wales. The money will be […]
A BLACKBURN solicitor who obtained an Anton Piller order in a bid to recover debts from a client, and then leaked information from seized documents to the press, has been described as “stupid” and “naive” by the barrister representing her. Sole practitioner Bushra Anwar admitted contempt of court at Preston High Court over her decision […]
Shipton v Hammersmith and Queen Charlotte’s Special Health Authority – QBD 8 July 1996 Claimant: Sian Shipton Incident: Medical negligence Injuries: Plaintiff began to haemorrhage after the delivery of her daughter, Deryn, now five, at West London’s Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in April 1991; as result of negligent treatment plaintiff suffered oxygen starvation; has been left […]
Litigation is invariably self perpetuating. Such is the case with last year’s flurry of court action over the legality of livestock export bans imposed following mass animal-rights demonstrations at UK ports and airports. Ultimately one of the outcomes of the action was that a ban imposed by Dover Harbour Board, the body controlling the country’s […]
“Let’s kill all the lawyers.” The Lord Chancellor may not have said this as such but the proposed model for Civil Standard Fees for Advocates, which landed on our desks last week, has a murderous quality. If the proposals are implemented without major alteration, I have no doubt that many barristers will be tempted to […]
You are right to say (The Lawyer 23 July) that the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors has a steep task ahead in turning round the public’s perception of bias towards solicitors. You could equally well have referred to the difficulty of reversing the profession’s perception of bias in favour of clients. Of course solicitors […]
Anne Harvey was born in Glasgow in 1959. She lives in Oxfordshire and is research manager for Holiday Which? magazine in London, where she has developed the coverage of legal issues. What was your first job? Filing clerk at the firm where I became a partner. What was your first ever salary as a lawyer? […]
SCOTS firm Balfour & Manson has invested over £70,000 in state-of-the-art telecommunications equipment. It will be one of the first law firms to operate a Visual Mailbox, which allows employees to access their voice and fax messages from their PCs, meaning they can prioritise which messages to respond to first. Clients will be able to […]
A guide on IT security has been produced by legal IT consultants Irwin Associates. How to Survive a Computer Disaster explains how companies can prepare an IT security plan as well as how to reduce the impact of a security breach. The guide costs £37. For further details contact Graham Irwin on 01234 376319.