Latest news
LSB tells regulators to get moving with ongoing competence reform
The legal regulators have been given six months to deliver action plans to the Legal Services Board on how they are going to reform their regimes to ensure lawyers’ ongoing competence.
“Trial by internet” – Judges turn to Wikipedia to aid reasoning
Judges are using Wikipedia to research legal issues and allowing it to influence their reasoning, ground-breaking research has discovered.
Union’s head of legal receives apology over picket line arrest
A barrister working as a trade union’s in-house lawyer has received a formal apology and damages of £3,000 from the Metropolitan Police after he was arrested on a picket line.
Barrister awarded £22k over chambers’ response to gender-critical tweets
Garden Court Chambers has been ordered to pay member Allison Bailey damages of £22,000 for injury to feelings over the way it handled complaints about her gender critical views.
MoJ aims to extend compulsory mediation to “all county court users”
The Ministry of Justice’s “future ambition” is to extend compulsory mediation from small claims to all county court users and so it has begun considering its role in overseeing the mediation sector.
Law firms generate £1.4bn in fees from clinical negligence cases
Clinical negligence law firms earned around £1.4bn in fees during 2021/22, an 8% increase on the year before, according to new research that also predicted Covid could lead to more claims.
“Unjustifiably antagonised” lord justice should have recused himself
A lord justice of appeal who became “unjustifiably antagonised” by a defendant’s “persistence” in challenging his decisions should have recused himself, the Court of Appeal has ruled.
LSB backs huge cut in time limit for complaining to Legal Ombudsman
The Legal Services Board has, after “very extensive debate”, backed a cut in the time limit for complaining to the Legal Ombudsman from six years to only one year.
MoJ proposes compulsory mediation for claims worth up to £10k
Mediation will be made compulsory for all small claims worth up to £10,000, potentially settling 20,000 cases that would otherwise end up in court, the Ministry of Justice proposed today.
Ban for PI fee-earner who used Covid as excuse for missing deadlines
A fee-earner at Slater & Gordon who falsely claimed he had missed litigation deadlines because of scanning errors and not being in the office due to the pandemic has been banned from working in law firms.
Blog
Your website is losing clients before they even pick up the phone
Your website visitor is likely already carrying stress before they arrive. If your site adds to it rather than relieves it, you have likely lost a prospective client.
The growing importance of higher limits in personal ATE
While the personal litigation market is undergoing a period of significant change as claims become more complex, much of the ATE insurance market has remained relatively static.
The profession can play a greater role in improving access to justice
In this, the third blog of my series, I focus on what lawyers in the UK can do to improve access to justice through greater professional stewardship.
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