Issues

REFORM plans which could see the Law Society presid-ent’s wings clipped are to be discussed at a special meeting on Wednesday. The extra meeting, which is costing the Law Society up to £20,000 to arrange, was scheduled after planned debates on a wholesale shake-up of Chancery Lane were squeezed out of both December and January’s […]

WILDE Sapte and Slaughter and May have been appointed to advise two separate groups in the Lloyd’s of London market. Both firms will help get the best deal for Lloyd’s Names in the forthcoming settlement plan. The current phase of talks is critical. Lloyd’s Corporation, the market’s secretariat, is finalising terms of the settlement while […]

They are intelligent, hard-working employees and well paid for their commitment. But are high fliers happy? Many appear to be sacrificing their personal lives on the altar of success. Lawyers are typical of the professional classes for whom St Valentine’s day means nothing. Locked into busy schedules, they have no time to search out their […]

THE GOVERNMENT’S decision to continue the ban on homosexuality in the armed forces looks set to cause a clash between it and the European Court of Human Rights. The decision by the Ministry of Defence is expected to be announced later this month when the internal review of the policy is made public. The report […]

The ruling of the Leeds Industrial Tribunal on 8 January 1996, that Labour’s ‘women-only’ short lists are illegal, gives rise to some interesting questions (Dyas-Elliott & Jepson v Labour Party). The applicants were men wishing to be considered for selection in Labour constituencies which had women-only short lists. The men relied on section 13 Sex […]

CITY firm Waltons & Morse secured one of the City’s fastest-ever property deals when it completed the sale of the Lloyd’s of London building. The sale, to German open-ended investment fund DESPA for £180 million, took just seven days from the day an offer was made and involved “working round the clock”, said lawyers involved. […]

UK firm Dibb Lupton Broomhead has struck a formal association with 355-lawyer Chicago practice Hinshaw & Culbertson. Both firms say the partnership will aim to share expertise for mutual client benefit, refer business to each other, participate in joint projects and regularly second lawyers to each others firms. Thomas Hamilton, partner in charge of Hinshaws […]

PRESSURE is mounting on the Law Society to give up its control of complaints handling despite its insistence that the issue is a red herring. The National Consumer Council has just circulated its response to the Law Society’s consultation on reform of the Solicitors Complaints Bureau. It rejects society plans to make a revamped bureau […]

THE CAMPAIGN to force the revision of “complex, bureaucratic and inflexible” government proposals to abolish committal proceedings has intensified. The Law Society’s criminal law specialist Roger Ede and London Criminal Court Solicitors’ Association president Tony Edwards are due to meet senior Home Office officials this week to press the case for major changes to the […]

National Law Tutors, the legal training company, has teamed up with the University of Cambridge Board of Continuing Education to pool lecturing resources. The two bodies boast they can jointly provide more than 400 continuing professional development courses for solicitors. David Tucker, of National Law Tutors, said the venture combined the academic strengths of the […]

The Law Society has rejected claims in The Times that solicitors are working in legal limbo because its new £2.5 million computer system has failed to send out their practising certificates in time. The article said the Law Society was breaking the law by failing to discharge its functions under the Solicitors Act 1974. In […]