conciselawnews.co.uk

Solicitor owes bank 70 million euros

An Irish solicitor appears to have run up a staggering debt of 70 million euros, which, surprise surprise, he is not now in a position to pay it back. The reports on this story do not make it clear whether the loan was in any way assisted by the fact that the individual concerned, Brian O’Donnell, was a solicitor, and perhaps the bigger issue is that this is further evidence of the excesses of the last decade and frankly totally reckless lending.

Family law & child obesity

Modern day life creates always creates new legal points and challenges and those which arise relating to family law often involve a very sad aspect also.

One aspect of life which has become an increasing problem in western society but where the family law implications are not always obvious relates to childhood obesity. This has been a particular issue in the USA but the problem is now getting steadily worse in other western countries.

In family law terms, at what point could a child’s gross obesity become a legal issue such that the child is removed from his or her parents ? We are unaware of any English law precedents on this issue but in the USA there are some precedents.

In Cleveland, Ohio, an 8 year old has been placed in foster care because his mother was not doing enough to control his weight, which was grossly excessive.

For more on this particular story, click here.

What do you think about this issue – should the law intervene in these circumstances and if so, how ?

We saw some very interesting figures quoted on another site this week, which we believe our readers will be interested in and which demonstrate just how big an impact the proposed legal aid cuts are likely to have on divorce. The figures are from 2009 but there’s no reason to suppose they will be radically different this year or last year. so, here goes :-

• In 2009,  just under 114,000 divorce petitions were started.
• Over 87,000 of those divorces were funded by legal aid.
• Some 70% of divorce petitions are started by women and a proportion of those will obviously be non-working mums who do not have their own income.

Whether you are for or against divorce being fairly easy to obtain in England & Wales or for or against the legal aid system, the above clearly shows that removing legal aid in areas like divorce will have a very significant impact which is difficult to predict. With unhappy families forced to stay together, could there be a devastating impact on children ? With more people forced to go to court themselves will this result in huge extra resources being needed to run the courts thereby making the costs savings of cutting legal aid a farce ?

These are just a couple of possible if not likely outcomes, there are likely to be many more. what is your opinion ? Please do let us know.

Impact of Legal Aid cuts on employment law

Employment law is one of those areas where there has been very limited access to legal aid (only an initial interview generally) so many might think that the legal aid cuts won’t impact on this very important area of law. But that would be wrong.

With employee legal problems, due to the lack of legal aid and fact that it is not easy to get no win no fee advice from employment solicitors, the Citizen’s Advice Bureaus around the country have fulfilled a vital function in helping employees decide how to deal with problems at work such as unfair dismissal, discrimination, bullying and harassment.

If the legal aid cuts do go ahead it is very likely that  Citizens Advice Bureaux won’t have sufficient funds to help the more than 3,00 people a year they currently help.

This in turn may well have a counterproductive knock on effect for the Government. More employees will be forced to run their own cases. The Employment tribunal is free to use and generally the process is slower than other courts, so a lot of extra tribunal time could well be taken up with people representing themselves with even less knowledge of the law or rules. This in turn means more expense in running the Tribunal system which could be more expensive than the current situation where a Citizens advice advisor is a very cheap and effective alternative to using solicitors.

What do you think ?

Mixed new on pay and promotion equality

A new survey by the Chartered Management Institute  provides some interesting data which, on the whole, confirms that whatever the law may provide, gender equality remains some way off in practice, subject to some notable exceptions. Some of the more interesting results are :-

• Senior male employees pay rose by 2.3% last year whereas senior female employees received a pay rise of on average 2.8 %
• Women often occupy senior roles in Human Resources but not as many proportionately are senior in finance, marketing or IT
• The overall pay gap, in a survey sample of over 34,000 senior employees was found to have widened last year marginally, but still remains significant in that for senior roles a male employee still earns an average of more than £10,000.00 more than a woman.

Mr Monkey

In a groundbreaking case of huge potential, a British person using a different account name in a twitter account has had his account details disclosed based on a court order against his consent. This was not a decision of the English courts but instead based on a California court ruling.

The underlying issue related to allegedly defamatory comments made about decisions made by South Tyneside Council by a twitter account in the name of “Mr Monkey”.

A person using a twitter account in a different name may still not use his or her real name when setting up a twitter account, but there does have to be a related email address and information may also reveal which computer has been used to make postings which can link an individual to an account.

Based on these criteria, the spotlight in terms of the Mr Monkey account has fallen on Mr Ahmed Khan, who is a South Tyneside Councillor. Mr Khan denies that he is responsible for the twitter postings in question but is known to be a critic of the Council from within.

South Tyneside Council is believed to have spent about £75,000.00 on this case. It appears that Mr Khan is now also considering applying for judicial review.

Do your research

A new survey indicates that the public ought to do more research before instructing solicitors.

It is understandable that, when instructing a solicitor, the public tend to think that they are all competent and efficient. The focus tends to be on price and service. However, in reality, whilst price and service are relevant factors, it is far more important to have a solicitor who genuinely knows about the type of law you need, who does not have a long history of complaints, at a firm that can properly deal with your matter.

Even many of the so-called solicitor comparison sites or vetting sites do not properly check this. This is even more surprising since the Solicitors Regulation authority (SRA) website now has this information. You can search by firm or solicitor.

Returning to the survey, this found :-

• just over 50% of those instructing a solicitor in the last 3 years checked their qualifications.
• the survey was commissioned by www.personalinjurylawyers.co.uk and questioned just over 1,100 people
• 41% said they were not satisfied with the solicitors service
• 76%, did not check whether their solicitor has genuine expertise in the area of law where they instructed
• 22% stated they had relied on a personal recommendation
• 62% had instructed based on locality and the first solicitors they spoke with or contacted

Will statistics from ICM Direct

Some recent statistics relating to wills are as follows :-

• Over 60% of adults do not have a will
• Nearly 70% with young children have not made a will
• In the age group of 55-65 the figure is around 50%
• Of those who have made a will only around 15% have reviewed it in the last 10 years
• Some 25% do not even consider making a will and a similar proportion think it’s very expensive to make a will which is simply not the case.

Whilst none of us wants to think about our own death, these statistics suggest that far too many people simply don’t understand the compelling reasons to make a will and that most wills do not cost more than around £300.00. This is not a small amount of money but it is hardly unaffordable in the context of the benefits provided.

Credit where credit is due. We came across this post today, thought about potentially putting a spin on it, but the article simply cannot be improved, it really is excellent and embodies are own views, So, without further ado, if you are interested, whether as a client or a lawyer in anew take on what clients want from lawyers, click this link.  Hope you enjoy.

Work and play becoming increasingly merged ?

Many will not be surprised by research indicate that convergence not only relates to the merge of ways to access the internet, phones and other devices but also to the fact that many people are finding the boundaries between work and leisure time are increasingly blurring.

The research by Gradwell found that :-

• 1 in 3 British people answer business calls while on holiday
• The biggest sector finding it hard to switch off are men, and of these, senior management and people over 65 are finding it particularly hard to shut off their business.

Commentators are of suggesting that part of the problem may be pressure imposed by work , by providing smartphones, for employees to either consciously or subconsciously form the view that this means they need to be available almost 24/7. Not great for stress or work/life balance.

Possible employment law claims in the offing based on the above ?