It seems that client choice is following the path of so much else in the criminal legal system as it is threatened with being killed off in the proposed shake up of criminal legal aid.

Despite the fact we all believed this was protected in LASPO, it seems the minister allowed himself enough wriggle room and soon it will be like A&E, you simply get the first doctor to see you and no choice in the matter.

S.27 of LASPO says: Read the full story

Last week the Law Society, the Legal Services Board and the Ministry of Justice published the results of a research project into the supply of legal services by solicitors’ firms.

The report – ‘A time of change: solicitors’ firms in England and Wales’ – is the culmination of what claims to be one of the largest ever surveys. Based on a sample of 2,007 firms, the report reveals how solicitors’ firms of all types are performing, in the context of recession, market changes, regulatory developments and legal aid reforms. Read the full story

Government proposals to expand secret courts suffered a series of hefty defeats in the House of Lords last Wednesday, significantly narrowing the scope of the justice and security bill. This can have come as no surprise to the government. The opposition of human rights groups and many prominent lawyers, and parliament’s joint committee on human rights (JCHR), to secret trials and withholding evidence has been mounting. Read the full story

Last week was National Pro Bono week, an opportunity for the legal profession to take pride in its very impressive commitment to volunteering.

With the support of the Law Society, LawWorks has surveyed the legal profession to find out what pro bono is being done, how it is supported in organisations and what the future might look like. Last week saw the launch of the LawWorks Pro Bono Survey 2012. Read the full story

It isn’t really surprising that the Law Society’s marketing campaign, with the theme of ‘Ask a Solicitor’, has provoked a lively discussion in the Law Gazette LinkedIn group. Read the full story

The specific and immediate technology proposals of the Swift and Sure white paper are just the beginning. The white paper makes it clear that: “Our reforms will provide the impetus for the next stage of the CJS Efficiency Programme.” Read the full story

On Monday the Law Society announced that, jointly with the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Services Board, it intended to commission research to understand more about ‘high street’ law firms, the main providers of legal services and legal aid.

The aim of the research is to understand more about the providers of legal services ahead of regulatory changes, the reforms to legal aid, and other significant changes in the legal sector. This research will act as an initial baseline with the potential for follow-up research to be commissioned at a later date to measure the impact of changes once they have bedded in. Read the full story

At the moment, anyone is entitled to free advice in the police station if they are arrested. For minor cases they may get only telephone advice, for more serious cases they get a lawyer in the police station for any interview. The universal right to representation by a solicitor at a police station was enshrined in Read the full story

Despite reservations expressed by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), the Bar Standards Board (BSB) is currently piloting an aptitude test that assesses analytical and critical reasoning, and fluency in the English language. Reasons given by the BSB for introducing the test included the belief that the standard of admission to such an expensive course is too low, particularly regarding Read the full story

Last week Lord Justice Jackson unveiled a large scale shake-up of civil litigation costs. After a year-long review into the rocketing costs of bringing legal action in England and Wales, he has made radical proposals that include accident victims paying “success fees” to lawyers out of any compensation they are awarded. Read the full story