EDGE & Ellison partner Jayne Willetts and College of Law lecturer Suzanne Fine have each broken new ground in gaining High Court rights of advocacy. Willets is the only woman solicitor in England and Wales to have been granted rights of audience in High Court civil proceedings while Fine, who qualified a few days later, […]
CITY law firm Stephenson Harwood is funding the chair of comparative law at the University of Greenwich for the next three years at a total cost of u45,000. Senior partner Donald Amlot says: “It makes sense for us to support a chair on comparative law. The University of Greenwich is a new university with a […]
The system by which accident victims on social security benefits have to pay back their benefits when they win compensation is unfair, says the Law Society in evidence to the Social Security Select Committee last week. The society called for changes to allow victims to receive the damages for pain and suffering in full, which […]
In a landmark ruling last week the Law Lords, by a three to two majority, upheld an Appeal Court decision that two sisters, who as a result of delays in preparation of their father’s will lost out on legacies intended for them, are entitled to damages and interest from the Birmingham firm of Philip Baker […]
Eila Rochfort, senior partner at Camberley firm Neale Turk Rochfort, has been appointed chair of the Solicitors Benevolent Association for 1995. Rochfort, a director of the association since 1982, was president of the West Surrey Law Society in 1985.
Two local authorities are at legal loggerheads over a bike ban in the centre of Cambridge. The city council is taking the unusual step of exploring the possibility of legal action against the county council. One public law expert says it is not unheard of for a local authority to consider judicial review of another, […]
Nordic lawyer Christina Tolvas-Vincent has become the first member of the Finnish Bar to pass the Qualified Lawyers Transfer Test in the UK. After four years with Southampton firm Hepherd Winstanley & Pugh, she can now represent clients in court. The switch was possible following Finland’s entry into the European Community at the start of […]
Two partners at the Scottish office of leading personal injuries and trades union firm Robin Thompson & Partners have gone on trial at Edinburgh Sheriff court charged with fraud. The issues involved in the case concern the recovery of litigation costs from opponents following successful litigations. Partners David Stevenson and Lawrence Lumsden both deny overcharging […]
TWO law firms are to defend a negligence claim running into millions of pounds after allegedly failing to warn their clients a property they were buying was “seriously overvalued”. Jeffrey Green Russell and Lovell White Durrant both say they will contest their liability vigorously at the High Court trial scheduled for Monday next week. Rentaminster, […]
National firm Hammond Suddards is to restructure its Yorkshire base by moving its corporate, litigation and commercial property departments from Bradford to Leeds.
FORTY per cent of the women barristers surveyed had experienced sexual harassment and 70 per cent had encountered discrimination. Three quarters of the respondents said racial discrimination was a problem and out of an original non-white student intake of 115 on the 1989/90 course only two were identified as having made it to junior tenancy. […]
THE ENTIRE pupillage system may need an overhaul or it will remain a disorganised lottery for young barristers, a major study on the junior bar has concluded. Alarming levels of sexual harassment and perceptions that racial and sexual discrimination in the independent Bar is rife are also highlighted in the report commissioned by the Council […]