LAWYERS who won a landmark victory for victims of asbestos-related disease are waiting for a decision from the Court of Appeal this week. Engineering company T&N, once the world’s biggest manufacturer of asbestos products, is appealing against a decision made last October awarding damages to two victims of asbestos-related disease. This was the first time […]
THE TWO consortia fighting it out to help hundreds of Gulf War Syndrome sufferers sue the Government for negligence have renewed their battle to win the contract to handle the action. Tendering for the generic legal aid contract to run the multi-party action has started afresh after a landmark High Court decision to quash the […]
LEADING lawyers who have observed human rights trials abroad are to speak at a special Law Society and Bar Council training day. Solicitors Geoffrey Bindman and Jane Deighton are among the speakers at the human rights event, to be held on 18 May. They will share their experiences and offer practical advice through talks and […]
The City of London Law Society has spoken out in support of Law Society president Martin Mears’ right to pursue his agenda. The City society’s president, Stuart Beare, said it was concerned about the problems being faced by law firms up and down the country. He said: “Whether or not one agrees with the president’s […]
A DIRECTORY of solicitors working in the UK is now on the Internet
Simmons & Simmons is celebrating the past by making an investment in the future. The firm, which celebrates its centenary this year, has assembled a collection of works created in the 1990s by London-based artists. Stuart Evans, a corporate finance partner at Simmons & Simmons, worked with art dealer Thomas Dane to assemble the collection, […]
Publishing on the Net is growing at an enormous pace and could prove a valuable way of advertising your firm’s services as well as saving money, reports Chris Davis In Europe, companies spend an estimated 22.5 billion ECU each year on publishing. It is an area that can benefit immensely from using the information superhighway, […]
Adrian Keith Stickland, 46, admitted 1974, practising at material times in partnership as England Stickland Erdington, Birmingham, fined £1,500 and ordered to pay £636 costs. Allegations substantiated he failed or failed with reasonable expedition to respond to enquiry addressed to him by former client’s new solicitors and failed or failed with reasonable expedition to respond […]
As competition for legal business intensifies, marketing and public relations have risen to the top of the practice agenda. But in my experience, lawyers – in common with other professions – are poor at selling their services and getting their message across to the outside world. Blame for the profession’s communication problem can be laid […]
Recent coverage of the Director General of Fair Trading’s decision to refer Scottish solicitors’ property centres to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission indicated that the Restrictive Practices Court had ‘cleared’ the centres. This is not the case. The court did not consider whether the restrictions in the agreements concerning the Aberdeen and Edinburgh centres were […]
Newly appointed Law Society secretary gemera; Jane Bettw has certainly got her work cut out for her. She joins a professional body at a time of unprecedented political imbalance and sustained quarrelling. A time when even paid officers, whose objectivity has always been relied upon, have been drawn into the fray. Chancery Lane needs a […]
The piece about my appearance in the Court of Appeal (‘First for sole advocate in civil appeal’, The Lawyer 26 March) is inaccurate. It alleges I claimed to be the first solicitor advocate to have acted as a sole advocate in the civil division of the Court of Appeal. It then quotes Paul Hampton as […]