News in brief: week beginning 6 October 2014
Law Society Excellence Awards, Lamborghini rides and private prosecutions
CRIME
Celebrity attraction: The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has issued new guidance stating that the most serious cases of revenge should be prosecuted under laws which carry a maximum sentence of 14 years. This would include putting sexually explicit images of former partners online. The guidelines state that prosecutions should not be brought under obscenity laws but on the basis of the menace and humiliation intended. In the most serious cases, where intimate images are used to coerce victims into sexual activity, then proceedings should be brought under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
AWARDS
Lifetime achievement: The outstanding achievements of the legal profession in England and Wales have been celebrated by the Law Society at a ceremony in London. Among the winners was DLA Piper, Slaughter and May, Cli fford Chance, DAC Beachcroft and Ramsdens Solicitors. Former Law Society chief executive, Des Hudson, was presented with the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ or ‘President’s Award’ by Andrew Caplen. The ‘Junior Lawyer of the Year’ award went to Camilla Graham Wood of Birnberg Peirce and Partners.
REGULATOR
Account rules: The SRA is seeking views from the profession on proposed changes to the accounts rules applicable to entities and individual authorised persons practising overseas’. The regulator is proposing to move the accounts rules that apply to overseas practice from the SRA Accounts Rules section of the SRA Handbook into the Overseas Rules, and to simplify their application and content. The SRA consultation paper outlines the changes it is proposing and views are sought from interested parties on the impact that such changes might have. The deadline for submission of responses to the consultation is 22 December.
CHARITIES
0-60 mph: Greater Manchester-based law rm Asons Solicitors has launched a contest to find the unsung heroes of its hometown’s charities, and to reward their hard work by o ffering the winner a driving experience in the Lamborghini Huracan that belongs to the firm’s CEO, Dr Imran Akram. The firm supports local charities as part of its corporate social responsibility policy. It is seeking the most deserving charity employee from Bolton and has invited selected charities, including Bolton Hospice, Bolton Lads & Girls Club and Bolton Steps, to nominate their nest employees.
PERSONAL INJURY
Accreditation scheme: The Legal Aid Agency has announced that lawyers holding the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers’ (APIL) clinical negligence accreditation standard will now have access to legal aid for their clients. The move follows earlier recognition of the quality of the APIL’s accreditation scheme from the Legal Services Consumer Panel. A YouGov personal injury report published earlier this year found that more people who pursued a personal injury claim used an APIL’s accredited lawyer than any other listed scheme.
EMPLOYMENT
Workplace stress: Absence management gures published in a report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), found that stress and mental health issues remain the overarching reason for days o work. However, one third of employers who included stress in their top five reasons for absence are not currently taking any action to address this issue. The CIPD report considers key workplace absence issues and is based on survey replies from 518 organisations from a range of sectors throughout the UK, which employ a total of 1.4 million employees. The survey reports that overall absence levels have fallen from an average of 7.6 days per employee in 2013, to 6.6 days this year.
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Criminal acquisition: National law rm Cartwright King has acquired the Bastian Lloyd Morris (BLM) criminal defence team in Milton Keynes. BLM was co-founded by solicitor and higher court advocate (HCA) Jaclin Bastian in 2007, and she now joins Cartwright King as a senior associate, as does solicitor and HCA, Silpa Mistry, along with their team Crystal Plummer, a solicitor and paralegal Charmaine Orr. The team is on the Legal Services Commission’s ‘Very High Cost Cases’ (VHCC) panel and have strong links with national organisations such as The Innocence Project.
CRIME
Private prosecution: Student, Haresh Mehta, gathered video evidence of himself being harassed on a pair of adapted sunglasses to carry out a private prosecution of his bully. The charges were brought against the bully under section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. The CPS declined to take over or halt the proceedings despite concluding there was a realistic prospect of conviction and that it was in the public interest for the case to go ahead. The defendant was given the option of paying a £500 fine or serving one day in custody; he chose a day in the cells.
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Spiritual representation: Solicitor Peter Foskett, of Lupton Fawcett Denison Till, has been appointed Registrar for the new ‘super diocese’ of West Yorkshire and the Dales, which was created on 20 April 2014. It is the largest diocese in England at 2,425 square miles, extending from Barnsley in the south to parts of County Durham in the north and includes the cities of Leeds, Bradford, Wake field and Ripon. Foskett’s new role will see him as the legal advisor to the Bishop of Leeds, the clergy and churchwardens of the new diocese which has three cathedrals and 656 churches.
COURTS
Sheriff problems: Official figures indicate that delays in Scotland’s courts have grown worse in recent years resulting in victims of crime not seeing justice done quickly enough. Opposition parties argue the recent closures of several courts are to blame for the worsening delays which mean the proportion of cases seen with a 26-week target has been cut. The number of Sheriff Court cases fell from 75.7 per cent to 70.9 per cent which is the lowest since 2009. SJ