Thursday 21 June 2012

London courts were disrupted last week by 'teething problems' with a new courier service employed to deliver files to court, the Crown Prosecution Service said.

A CPS spokeswoman said that the problems followed the start of a contract with City Sprint to deliver files in London. City Sprint said disruptions were due to the start date of the contract being brought forward unexpectedly.

Caseload acquired

Personal injury specialist Neil Hudgell Solicitors has bought a £1m caseload from Solihull-based Forum Law Ltd - its third such acquisition this year.

Bright accredited

Plymouth firm Bright has become the 1,500th practice to gain accreditation with the Law Society's Conveyancing Quality Scheme.

LSB underspend

The Legal Services Board underspent its near £5m budget for 2011/12 by £350,000, the oversight body's newly published annual report shows. The cash will be returned to approved regulators.

The median salary at the LSB is £49,000, but staff pay levels have been frozen for two years.

Electoral reform

Laws governing elections are 'overly complex, inaccessible and voluminous', according to the Law Commission. It launched a consultation on a 'scoping exercise' as the first step towards recommending reforms.

Shift in attitudes

US firms are increasingly concerned by the threat of price competition and the end of hourly billing.

An Altman Weil survey of 238 firms found a dramatic shift in attitudes among managers. It said 92% of respondents now expect price competition to be a permanent fixture of the legal market, compared with just 42% in 2009. The proportion of firms that see more commoditisation of legal work as inevitable has more than trebled, while four in every five firms believe non-hourly billing will be a permanent feature of the market.

Committee elections

Senior partner at CMS Cameron McKenna Dick Tyler was elected to the committee of the City of London Law Society at its AGM this week. He was joined by Berwin Leighton Paisner partner Marc Hanson, Eversheds partner Nicholas Emmerson and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer consultant Vanessa Knapp. Macfarlanes' senior partner Charles Martin was re-elected to the committee following the end of his three-year term.

Resolving disputes

Nominations for the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution's biennial awards are open until 13 August. The winners will be announced at a dinner on 29 November.

Indian judges visit

The chief justice of India, Sarosh Homi Kapadia, led a delegation of Indian judges to the UK this week. The visit is the latest in a series of exchanges to discuss judicial independence, environmental and economic issues, and freedom of expression.