Successive governments have considered increasing the small claims limit for personal injury claims, at the behest of the insurance industry lobby, from £1,000 to £5,000. But the lower limit remains unchanged because, so far, evidence and reasoning have prevailed. The last time the government tried to implement an increase was in 2013 when it concluded that it would keep the issue under consideration for implementation “when appropriate”. Nothing has happened to suppose a small claims limit of £5,000 is any more “appropriate” in 2018 than it was in 2013.

Created in 2009, virtual currency bitcoin has seen a surge over the past year – both in terms of recognition and market value. Whilst the benefits of the prolific cryptocurrency include the option of anonymity and absence of transaction fees, its superficial gloss has been somewhat tarnished by certain factors – all of which could affect its chances of being used in a property transaction. One of the most widely reported drawbacks of Bitcoin is its volatility. So far, the digital currency has seen phenomenal overall growth in the last year but it has also suffered some serious ups and downs on a monthly, weekly, and even daily basis.

It’s that time of year again. Thinking about what’s gone before us and planning for the future – looking at what we do, how we do it, and more importantly, who we do it for. The last 10 years or so have seen the legal sector go through a period of unprecedented change, a period of change that shows no sign of abating any time soon. While ‘Tesco Law’ hasn’t brought Armageddon to the high street, (as I was told it would during the very first law firm conference I attended back in 2010), without doubt, for the vast majority of those in practice, the legal sector is a very different place to what it was in 2007, pre-economic downturn.

I suspect that many in the industry were as surprised as I was to read the decision in Agoreyo v London Borough of Lambeth [2017] EWHC 2019 (QB), which determined that suspension was in fact not a ‘neutral act’ and instead can amount to a repudiatory breach of the implied term of trust and confidence. It has made me reconsider what practical advice we must now give to clients considering suspension, to avoid it being considered a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction, and potentially amounting to a fundamental breach of contract.

I recently came to the end of a multi-day employment law case. My opponent was everything one might have traditionally expected a barrister to be: white, male, apparently public school educated and wearing a pinky ring to assure us he was of the right pedigree. From the moment I introduced myself with a smile on the first morning of the case (as I always do), he immediately assumed an over-familiarity with me, accompanied by a mean-spirited jocularity which I doubted he would have assumed had I been a fellow male barrister. On the second day of the case, after I had finished cross-examining his client, he approached me as the parties were leaving the tribunal room. He began an apparently casual conversation with the innocuous comment “It got awfully warm in there this afternoon”, to which I started to respond with an equally innocuous observation about the air-conditioning being switched off. Before I could finish my sentence, he retorted with “It must have been all your hot air”.