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 […]
Cavan Taylor, senior partner at Lovell White Durrant, will retire and be succeeded by Andrew Walker at the end of April 1996, and not this year, as stated in The Lawyer last week.
THE HIGH Court has dismissed an order requested by the Serious Fraud Office to suspend reporting on Mirror Group pension fund litigation. Patrick Stewart, partner of Swepstone Walsh, says the SFO applied for an order to postpone reporting on civil litigation until after the criminal proceedings involving Kevin and Ian Maxwell are over. Stewart says […]
A former practising barrister has set up the country’s first legal recruitment consultancy specialising in partnership appointments. Anthony Tomkins, founder of Charles Fellowes Partnership, says he founded his new London-based consultancy Tomkins because of the unprecedented demand for specialist partner level service.
Bar Council chairman and leading commercial lawyer Peter Goldsmith QC has been appointed as a member of the Financial Reporting Review Panel. The panel’s remit is to examine the annual accounts of public and large private companies to see whether they comply with the Companies Act 1985. Chair of the panel is Edward Glasgow QC.
THE LORD Chancellor’s Department is pressing ahead with a radical new system of paying barristers for legal aid work, despite problems highlighted by consultants. KMPG Peat Marwick was asked to come up with a model for “graduated fees” – a form of standardised legal aid payment for barristers – but ran into problems due to […]
THE DISCOVERY process does little to affect the outcome of litigation in the vast majority of cases, according to a survey by Allen & Overy. A&O partner David Mackie highlighted the findings at Lord Woolf’s final seminar on Access to Justice. Mackie told City lawyers and judges that the existing system was “unsatisfactory” before pointing […]
THE LAW Society will open its new regional office in Wakefield after a meeting of the Yorkshire Union of Law Societies voted “overwhelmingly” in favour of the city. The site was chosen over Harrogate, York and Sheffield, which also put in bids after it was announced the area would get its own regional secretary. Society […]
The Government has approved a 2.5 per cent pay increase for judges, at a cost of u3.9 million to the pay bill. The decision follows the publication of the 1995 reports of the review bodies. Prime Minister John Major last week announced the changes would be implemented by 1 April, saying costs would be met […]