Lord Woolf’s interim report arrives in the midst of the debate about implementation of conditional fees in limited areas of practice. A major thrust of his reforms is a shift in responsibility for proceedings from lawyers to judges. Will this set the scene for further relaxation of the rules restricting the ways in which we […]
Chris Jackson in The Lawyer, 6 June 1995 suggested a reverse Order 14 procedure be introduced to give defendants the chance to dispose of groundless claims at an early stage. However, such a procedure is already in place. Over the last six years I’ve been involved in the well-publicised litigation arising out of the prescription […]
Helen Sage reports Family law practitioners will have access to a new CD-ROM of family law reports from October. The reports, part of the Justis electronic library of legal information, will enable practitioners to retrieve information quickly on a range of family law issues, from child abuse to financial settlements on divorce. The Justis software […]
Settlement of a libel action John K Reames v The Guardian (1995). (QBD (Sir Michael Davies) 10/5/95). Summary: Statement to be read in court in connection with a sum paid into court by the defendant and accepted in settlement of the plaintiff’s libel action. In an article published by The Guardian of 30/7/94 the defendants […]
Rory Khilkoff-Boulding laments the Law Society’s tight grip on insurance products AS a solicitor also qualified to practice as an attorney and counsellor at law in New York and California, I have always been bemused by the intellectual difficulties that many practitioners have in this country as regards conditional or contingent fees. In the US, […]
Four years after the Law Society applies for rights of audience for employed solicitors, the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct reaches a decision. The eagerly awaited answer – it can’t decide. The Lord Chancellor now has two dissenting views from his so-called advisory committee on what exactly they are meant to […]
Presidential candidate Eileen Pembridge complains she is being marginalised because of her sex. It would be easy to dismiss her claim. After all, as the legal establishment will say, it is easy to latch on to the “sex discrimination” label when the chips are down. But as election day approaches, there is every sign that […]
THE CONSTRUCTION industry has been warned that new plain English standard-form building contracts are likely to spark increased litigation, rather than ease disputes. A construction industry conference held by City firm Berrymans was told the New Engineering Contract (NEC), issued by the Institution of Civil Engineers, would ignite a series of legal disputes to establish […]
Norton Rose is expanding its IT department with a ‘New directions for IT professionals’ programme. Positions created include a systems planning and development manager, a systems programmer and a quality assurance officer. Brian Powell, Norton Rose head of IT, aims to promote a more professional approach to IT in the legal profession. He says: “Law […]
THE REFORMS proposed in the ‘Access to justice’ report should be implemented as a package and not “cherry-picked”, Lord Woolf says. Woolf, who says that “the time is right” for making changes to the civil justice system, says the wide-ranging reforms included in the 266-page interim report must be introduced as a whole and not […]
A ROLLCALL of lawyers features in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours list. They include the long-serving editor of The Law Reports, Carol Ellis QC, who was awarded a CBE after 43 years of law reporting, and the former secretary of the Law Society’s Civil Litigation Committee, Allen Davies, who was awarded an OBE. The solicitor […]
THE BAR Council’s PR agency Westminster Strategy has retained its prestigious contract to manage the profession’s media and parliamentary relations. According to Bar Council chief executive Niall Morison, the lobbying agency beat off stiff competition to retain the contract it held for six years before the recently completed beauty parade. “It’s a prestigious job, it’s […]