US firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges has signed leading Brussels-based telecomms lawyer David Cantor to head the European part of its growing telecomms practice. The firm brought Cantor – European counsel to major international telecomms and mass media companies – on board last month. SA chair appointed Paisner & Co partner Michael Polonsky has been […]
City firm Penningtons has given up its eighth-floor offices in the Dashwood House block. Penningtons, currently believed to engaged in demerger talks with partners from its Bournemouth office, will continue to occupy 25,000 square feet of space on the first four floors of Dashwood House.
NEWSPAPER lawyers have warned that a new privacy law expected this month will lead to justice “behind closed doors”. They say decisions on the strength of privacy claims and press defences of public interest are likely to be made by judges in chambers rather than juries in open court. Problems for newspapers in future injunction […]
Regulatory deadlines are looming. Are the professions ready to meet them? The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales has played down suggestions that its membership has been slow off the mark in seeking authorisation to conduct financial services in time for the 1 July deadline. Product providers have expressed concerns that fewer accountants […]
LAW firms must make concerted efforts to ensure that women receive the same opportunities as their male colleagues to reach senior levels, a report says. The report is produced by the newly-formed Young Women Lawyers group. It says that despite Law Society statistics which show 44 per cent of solicitors admitted nine years ago were […]
BARRISTERS have claimed a moral victory over the Lord Chancellor on block legal aid contracts. At the Bar Council’s open meeting on legal aid last week the Lord Chancellor failed to explain how solicitors would be stopped from “keeping all the money” under block contracts. During a question and answer session, Lord Mackay was repeatedly […]
Helen Sage reports Two City law firms have linked up with a computer software company to produce Execomp, a software program designed to calculate compensation on termination of executive employment. With the assistance of Baker & McKenzie employment partner Michael Ingle and Fox Williams employment partner Jane Mann, Cadence Europress claims to have developed a […]
Olivia King, wife of Gladiator star Shadow, is heading for a legal battle with the media. She is taking action over a story about her relationship with Shadow which appeared in the Sunday Mirror on 5 February under the heading: ‘Shadow beat me senseless – TV Gladiator star is drug crazed monster, says wife’. She […]
Roger Pearson reports on the longest single civil case in legal history A High Court marathon between two Scottish farmers and chemical giant Rechem has ended. The duration of the case has taken it into the legal record books, with 198 days in court over 14 months. The action, which employed 21 expert witnesses from […]
ALTHOUGH nearly half the lawyers admitted nine years ago were women, only 25 per cent of this year’s new partners are women. This is despite the fact that the majority of respondents to the survey, carried out by the Young Women Lawyers group conceded that there was no shortage of eligible women for partnership. Further, […]
The Woolf report’s proposals for small claims may cause problems, says John Lymbury Woolf Report on Civil Procedure. I particularly welcome those that relate to the smoothing of procedures, the shortening of endless disclosure and discovery, and the “case management”, which is clearly designed to bring matters to trial more quickly than hitherto. In fact […]
Many lawyers must have struggled to understand the Commercial Agents (Council Directive) Regulations 1993. Their confusion is not helped by the attitude the Government takes to implementing the EU directives. These regulations, which were passed to comply with an EU Council directive, contain numerous provisions which are difficult to interpret. For example, the regulations state […]