The failure to implement a set of Standard Mortgage Instructions could spell disaster for high street solicitors, warns Chris Jowett. Chris Jowett is Halifax group solicitor and chairman of the Mortgage Lenders Legal Advisory Panel. More than a decade ago, the Farrand committee set up in the mid-1980s by then Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham to […]
LARGE litigation firms waging a campaign against proposed changes to the taxation of professional businesses will meet in private this week to draw up a plan of action. The firms aim to lobby the Inland Revenue over its plan to tax professional partnerships on work as it is done, rather than when payments are received. […]
LINKLATERS’ senior partner Charles Allen-Jones is leading a team of partners advising SmithKline Beecham on its intended merger with American Home Products (AHP), one of the leading pharmaceutical groups in the US. The merger would create a company with sales of more than £16bn and a stock market valuation of £75bn. But the merger, the […]
The head of legal and compliance at SocGen Asset Management, Nicola Horlick’s new fund management company, is beefing up his legal team. Robert Guest, a former senior legal officer with investment regulator Fimbra has hired two others to his team, Sheila Redston, who has moved over from Gartmore, another fund management company; and Sara Yaffe, […]
LONDON’S largest chambers, Hardwicke Building, has joined forces with 9 Bedford Row to recruit what is believed to be the Bar’s first ever full-time chambers IT manager. Former London University Astrophysics Department System Manager, Dr Basil Drolias, took up his new post at the beginning of the year, working three days a week at Hardwicke […]
CLIFFORD Chance is re-tendering its prestigious public relations contract in a bid to boost its international profile especially in Europe. The review may well see the firm’s current advisers Lowe Bell Financial, which took on the Clifford Chance account in 1996, dropped. The move follows a decision by the firm just before Christmas to re-assess […]
Four solicitors give their very different views on how to develop conveyancing…Michael Garson is a partner at Phillip Hodges & Co and creator of IPSO. Much has been said and written in the last year about the opportunities for solicitors to become involved in the house transfer process. Effecting a sea-change in the composition of […]
Bradford solicitors Last Cawthra Feather partner Simon Stell (pictured right), has been appointed as managing partner of the firm. Stell joined Last Cawthra Feather last February from Hammond Suddards, where he was a partner in the litigation department.
Chris Fogarty wonders whether the Government’s plan for a Community Legal Service will prove to be as revolutionary as many hope. By any measure it is a bold statement. ‘The Community Legal Service (CLS) can do for the law what the NHS did for national health when it started 50 years ago,’ Law Centres’ Federation […]
Two New York-based Brown & Wood partners, Cathy Kaplan and RJ Ruble are to share their time with the firm’s London office in a move to support the firm’s expanding international securitisation practice.
Increasing the limit for claims in the small claims court will ‘reduce access to real justice’, the Law Society has claimed in its response to the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine QC’s plans to raise the limit. It says litigants should be given the option of whether or not to use the small claims procedure when […]
MORE than 100 partners, assistant solicitors and fee earners at Lovell White Durrant have offered to do work for the firm’s new pro bono unit which was set up four months ago. The unit, headed by full-time pro bono officer Yasmin Waljee, is the first to be established by a City firm. Other firms, including […]