LEGAL aid solicitors have attacked Legal Aid Board proposals for “short term” block contracts, claiming they would have a destabilising effect on firms. The Legal Aid Practitioners Group has reacted to the publication of the board’s response to Lord Mackay’s Green Paper by homing in on the suggestion that contracts should last just two years […]
PLANS being hatched between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service for some Crown Prosecutors to be based in police stations could lead to CPS lawyers ‘going native’. Roger Ede, secretary to the Law Society’s criminal law committee, said: “We see dangers in the CPS being too closely involved with the police. There is a […]
AUSTRALIAN practice Allens Arthur Robinson has appointed Allen & Overy lawyer Duncan Walls to head its London office. He will replace the current managing partner Jim Dunstan, who has run the London office for the past three years. Dunstan is returning to Sydney in March to run the banking department of Allen Allen & Hemsley, […]
A former partner of collapsed north-west firm Deacon Goldrein Green has lodged an appeal against her bankruptcy. Patricia Reynolds was declared bankrupt after a hearing at Liverpool County Court in October, along with two other former partners, Martin Green and Robert Ollerhead. Further action was then stayed until 30 November to allow them time to […]
The Washington DC office of Dechert Price & Rhoads has signed five lawyers from defunct New York firm Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon. Senior litigation lawyer Leonard Garment, former managing partner of the Mudge Rose DC office I Lewis Libby, Ralph Oman, Joseph Aronica and Edith Albert have moved. Their signings have expanded Decherts’ […]
JONATHAN Evans MP, the new Parliamentary Secretary at the Lord Chancellor’s Department, has given a controversial description of magistrates courts service funding. “In spite of the very heavy pressure on running costs, we have managed to maintain the current grant at its baseline level,” Evans told delegates at the annual conference of the Central Council […]
The past few months have seen a variety of often contradictory proposals about changing group actions to make them more cost effective. The main suggestions come from the Lord Chancellor’s Green Paper, Legal Aid – Targeting Need, Lord Woolf’s proposals, and the report by the working party of the Law Society examining group actions. Lord […]
This book is a selection of 90 case reports on the relationship between European Union law and national law of the 12 member states on key issues such as the Maastricht Treaty, the supremacy and direct effect of EU law, the remedies available before the national courts, and the impact of EU law on sovereignty […]
TROWERS & Hamlins is celebrating the achievement of an impressive stranglehold on the public housing market after helping a housing association raise £105 million in the largest venture of its kind. The firm says it has now helped the housing movement raise £5 billion of private finance, amounting to more than 60 per cent of […]
Pinsent Curtis advised UK software development company Software One on an investment by major US software corporation Sybase. The investment is by way of a loan with an option to convert into shares and a development agreement. Hammond Suddards advised Sybase.
Imagine struggling away at your job and ending the year without making any money out of it. Not so hard to imagine for a vast number of practitioners, who will find the newly-released figures on earnings and profitability in the solicitors’ profession a depressing confirmation of what they already know to be true. According to […]
HOME Secretary Michael Howard has allocated new responsibilities to his ministers, following the appointment of Tom Sackville as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State. The department now has five ministers under Howard. Nicholas Baker resigned as Under Secretary of State earlier this year on medical grounds and was replaced by Timothy Kirkhope. Sackville joined the team […]