THE BAR Council has appointed the head of Manchester Metropolitan University’s School of Law to oversee its new education and training department. Nigel Bastin takes on the newly-created role on 1 January and will prepare the Bar for its position as regulator of the Bar Vocational Course. Under the recently approved validation scheme the Bar […]
Failed presidential canditate Henry Hodge could see his council seat disappear if proposals by vice-president Robert Sayer to abolish unelected seats are approved. Hodge, an outspoken critic of president Martin Mayers, would be the highest profile victim of the plan to replace the 14 unelected specialist seats on the council with seats directly elected by […]
Among the mass of paperwork which lands on my desk every morning, there is usually several invitations to attend a lunch, dinner or seminar with drinks. The subtext of all these invitations is a desire to secure work from Wetherspoons. One of the main business functions of the company involves the conversion of unlicensed premises […]
The Government is resisting new European law giving employees rights to holidays, said unions last week. John Monks, Trade Union Congress (TUC) general secretary, attacked the Government’s “Victorian workhouse mentality” for being the only EU country resisting provision of a legal right to paid holiday leave. A directive providing workers with immediate rights to a […]
UK LABOUR laws encourage bad employment practices and provide employers with a “licence to exploit” workers, the Trades Union Congress claims. Speaking at last week’s Employment Lawyers Association annual lecture, TUC general secretary John Monks told more than 200 practitioners that major pieces of employment legislation introduced in recent years had “whittled away” workers’ rights […]
AN APTITUDE test for would-be solicitors to be taken before training has emerged as the favoured presidential device for reducing the profession’s trainee surplus. Law Society vice-president Robert Sayer appears to have plumped for non-academic personality tests as the best way to deal with what he and president Martin Mears identified during the presidential elections […]
TWO LONDON boroughs face judicial review next month over claims that they have failed to take action to reduce the incidence of asthma. Personal injury firm Leigh Day & Co is taking Bromley Council to court on 6 December after it refused to allow a four-year-old asthmatic resident to switch from a school situated by […]
A Birmingham barrister is fighting allegations that his advice to a client contravened the Bar’s Code of Conduct, after he was featured in a Cook Report investigation. Last Tuesday’s edition of the television programme showed Balbir Singh, of Rowchester Chambers, telling a client to ‘bump off” a troublesome relative, establish alibis and dispose of evidence […]
The Bar’s proposed system for handling complaints as drawn up by the Complaints System Working Group is by no means perfect. The Legal Services Ombudsman Michael Barnes has described it in a letter on this page as “modest and overdue”. It does not deal with advocates’ immunity. Nor does it deal with the subject of […]
PERSONAL injury barristers have burst on to the Bar political scene with the election of the president of their newly-formed group on to the council. Personal Injury Bar Association president Daniel Brennan QC is one of the three silks to be voted on to the council in this year’s round of elections. The association was […]
A SENIOR healthcare lawyer at McKenna & Co has called for medical product pricing decisions to be kept out of court after his firm’s successful action on vitamin prices. Healthcare partner Gary Hickinbottom said the Office of Fair Trading was best placed to resolve the public interest issues involved. His comments come after McKennas won […]
A courts service strike over government privatisation plans has moved a step nearer after a union ballot registered a vote for action. If other ballots produce the same result, unions will call a strike over staff fears concerning the £60 million project finance initiative (PFI) “outsourcing” of computer and administration systems in County and Crown […]