MCkenna & Co and Nab-arro Nathanson acted on the largest out-of-London property transaction this year. They spearheaded the £90 million sale of the Fort Retail Park in Birmingham to a group of City investment institutions which included Pearl Assurance, Clerical Medical and British Airways Pensions. Nabarros advised the buyers and McKennas acted for Fort’s owner, […]
Solicitor Linda Packard has left management consultants Binder Hamlyn to head the legal consulting activity of The David Andrews Partnership, part of Grant Thornton. She specialises in advising law firms on all areas of business strategy. She will be joined by ex-BT information technology consultant Tim Lavender who will focus on telecommunications.
Judgment on the test case alleging a link between Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and human growth hormone treatment is expected this week. The test case at the High Court, which lawyers say was fought to the hilt, is believed to be the first CJD case to be litigated anywhere in the world, as well as the first […]
The beauty of Scotland is that it is big enough to be important in the UK and small enough for everyone to know everyone else.” Secretary of State for Scotland George Younger’s made this comment on Scotland generally, but it is particularly apposite to the country’s legal profession. The legal community is small enough for […]
As in other areas of specialist work, opinions are mixed as to whether the next wave of barristers match up to the current crop of the silks. But nevertheless practitoners have singled out a few first rate juniors. At Falcon Chambers, one of the juniors who is noted in particular as following in the leading […]
The introduction of the Crest electronic share dealing system in the City this week is awaited anxiously by lawyers who will have to deal with a plethora of new paperwork. Different documentation will be needed for rights issues and takeovers to take account of the Crest system which has been developed under the auspices of […]
South Africa’s leading black and white lawyers are to meet at the end of this month to thrash out a plan to create a unified post-apartheid body to govern themselves. The country’s attorneys – the equivalent of solicitors – are regulated, under a 1974 statute, by the four provincial law societies of Natal, the Cape, […]
Claire Vane, former head of human resources at Herbert Smith, now with legal recruitment agency ZMB, is being joined by her old number two at the firm, Charles Dodds. Vane and Dodds will be responsible for establishing a new offshoot at the agency which will specialise in recruiting non-legal staff for law firms in areas […]
The Proceeds of Crime (Scotland) Act 1995 which came into effect on 1 April this year is the latest weapon in the Scottish legal armoury to fight large scale international fraud and theft. Applying to all solemn and certain summary offences, Scottish civil litigators can use the Act as a vehicle to recover assets misappropriated […]
Westminster City Council has secured an injunction to stop a man from placing prostitute cards in phone boxes. The injunction, won at Central London County Court, was sought after it became clear that court action and fines had not proved a sufficient deterrent for the Shepherd’s Bush man. The injunction, only the second to be […]
The New York State Bar Association is proposing that restrictions on lawyers’ advertising should be dropped. New York State rules currently prohibit law firms placing adverts which include “puffery”, “self-laudation” and claims that “cast reflection on the legal profession as a whole”. But a string of US Supreme Court rulings in the past few years […]
Tory and Labour MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee have slated the plans of the Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay to make poor litigants pay a minimum contribution to their legal aid costs. “I suspect solicitors will pay the money out of their own pockets,” Sir Ivan Lawrence, chair of the Tory committee, told top […]