Local authorities are finding it more difficult to avoid responsibility for the actions of their employees, writes Roger Pearson. In the past there has been a string of cases in which local authorities have side-stepped a variety of claims on the basis that it would not be in the public interest for them to be […]
Lindsay Cliff, a former Simkins Partnership solicitor, has returned from an in-house job in Australia to be European legal director for Internet company Yahoo! For the past four years she has been an in-house lawyer at Bertelsmann’s Australian subsidiary BMG Australia.
Liverpool firm Silverbeck Rymer has lost its entire company and commercial department just two years after plans to expand the practice. Three partners, all of whom joined the firm within the last 24 months – Clive Mackintosh, John Shield and Howard Jones – quit the firm last month to set up a new firm, JST […]
This Saturday (18 July), fresh from its well-attended annual dinner, the Institute of Barristers’ Clerks holds its first ever annual conference at the College of Law in Store Street. The centrepiece will be a debate on the impact of conditional fees on the Bar. The event will be relayed to six regional centres using video […]
HSBC replaced Nabarro Nathanson with Freshfields last week as its adviser on the UK’s largest single office letting – its lease from Canary Wharf of a £500m, 41-storey Docklands headquarters. Nabarros, one of the property panel firms for HSBC and its subsidiary Midland Bank, had been advising the bank on its new headquarters when Canary […]
Frankfurt-based Punder Volhard Weber & Axster is to be the first German firm to introduce a full-time executive management. Punder, with the largest Frankfurt office of the German firms, says it has experienced “size-related management problems”. As a result, the firm is abolishing its existing unwieldy partners’ council, comprising three managing partners, the head of […]
Home secretary Jack Straw and the president of the Immigration Appeals Tribunal, Judge David Pearl, have launched an Internet-based database, The Electronic Immigration Network (EIN). The directory, which is run by an independent board, headed by Immigration Advisory Service director Keith Best, includes all immigration tribunal decisions from September 1997 and a further 300 significant […]
Allen & Overy has lost insurance associate Patrick Devine to the London office of US firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld where he will become a partner.
Recently sculpture fan Kirk Murdoch took time off from managing his firm, McGrigor Donald, to visit Glasgow School of Art’s Degree Show. His firm sponsors the private viewing of the show whose highlights include a sculpture of headless chickens by Kirsty Rae Glen, which Murdoch himself particularly warmed to.
Sheffield firm Irwin Mitchell is sponsoring a new research fellowship at the University of Sheffield. The holder of the post – The Irwin Mitchell Research Fellow – will combine research into legal services policy at the university with a training job at the firm.
SHOOSMITHS & Harrison has agreed to pay a former client £60,000 in a last minute settlement of her negligence claim against the firm. Shoosmiths admitted last August that it had mishandled Yvonne Lewis’s claim over the death of her husband in April 1993 following a collision with a drunk driver. But the settlement was only […]
Hickman & Rose, which is investigating allegations of brutality at Wormwood Scrubs, has accused officers at the jail of pressing prisoner clients to dump the firm. The accusation follows senior partner Jane Hickman’s arrest on suspicion of supplying drugs while visiting a client at Wandsworth prison earlier this month. It is contained in an open […]