Calls by Lord Justice Jackson to introduce fixed costs for civil claims worth up to £250,000 have been majorly condemned by the legal profession.
Access to Asia: RPC seals Singapore tie-up as it targets banking litigation
UK law firm RPC has agreed a tie-up with Singapore firm Premier Law as it seeks out claims against the major banks. The joint venture is to go live on 1 May this year.
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Ashurst hires DLA Piper arbitration head Saunders to boost City practice
After a slow churn of lateral partner hires in Ashurst‘s London office, the Anglo-Australian firm has kick-started 2016 by recruiting DLA Piper‘s high-profile international arbitration head Matthew Saunders.
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‘Criminal capability’: Cooley makes key appointment with Sullivan & Cromwell litigator Delahunty
Cooley has kicked off 2016 with further hires to its now year-old London office, adding prominent Sullivan & Cromwell litigator Louise Delahunty (pictured).
International hires: Hogan Lovells brings in key Hong Kong arbitration lateral as Mayer Brown expands German practice
Hogan Lovells and Mayer Brown have announced significant international recruitment today (9 December). Hogan Lovells has improved its disputes practice with the hire of Baker & McKenzie’s Hong Kong head of international arbitration James Kwan, while Mayer Brown has hired a three-lawyer team from Clifford Chance (CC) in Frankfurt to expand its M&A and restructuring practice.
The end of the tunnel – litigation and regulatory challenges in financial services
Legal Business teamed up with Simmons & Simmons to discover how financial institutions are coping with the twin threats of regulation and litigation, and assess whether the end is in sight.
If there was ever any doubt about what might be in store for the Volkswagen Group following its recent emissions scandal, a glance at the banking industry over the last five years offers a sobering clue.
Calling time at the Bar – Quality fears for English judges are growing as top QCs turn away from the bench
Disillusionment within the England and Wales judiciary was laid bare by the findings of the UK Judicial Attitude Survey in February this year. Pay freezes, pension cuts and increased workload have evidently soured the mood at the bench.
The survey, carried out by the UCL Judicial Institute, indicated that 86% of judges who had been in the post for at least five years believed that working conditions had worsened since 2010. And nearly a third of judges are considering leaving their positions early in the next five years. Perhaps even more worryingly, a high proportion of judges said that reduced pension benefits (76%) and a reduction in income in real terms (69%) would discourage people from joining the bench.
‘Absolutely outrageous’ – Gove floats £60m-plus tax on City law firms to fund criminal courts
New justice secretary Michael Gove is set for a tussle with City lawyers after floating a plan to impose a multimillion-pound tax on commercial law firms to pay for the abolition of a controversial criminal court charge on guilty defendants.
Gove’s plan has been proposed as a means to replace the revenues generated by the court charge that was supposed to bring in between £65m and £90m annually. A report in The Times in October said that a 1% levy has been floated as a means of appeasing the Treasury. Such a levy on the top 100 UK firms, which have combined revenues of £20.64bn, would potentially generate more than £200m annually but promises to ignite controversy over arbitrary taxation of one industry.
Signature Litigation: Policing arbitration – can accountability deficit be addressed?
Natalia Chumak
Partner, Signature Litigation
natalia.chumak@signaturelitigation.com
Nick Storrs
Senior associate, Signature Litigation
Over recent decades, arbitration for dispute resolution has become increasingly popular. Commercial parties are becoming far more amenable to resolving their differences by private means rather than through national court systems, which can be more costly and time-intensive. There is, of course, nothing wrong in engaging in a private, consensual process and there are numerous advantages of doing so. But the framework within which such disputes are resolved must be unimpeachably robust in order to meet the objective in any dispute resolution process: to do justice between the parties in accordance with the law. Accordingly parties’ autonomous right to submit disputes to arbitration needs to be structured within a legislative framework which governs and regulates the arbitral process. This is in part to:
Harneys: British Virgin Islands positioned to become an international arbitration centre
The British Virgin Islands’ (BVI) Arbitration Act 2013 came into force on 1 October 2014. It is a landmark piece of legislation which is expected to propel alternative dispute resolution in the BVI into high gear. The BVI is now well-positioned to become a leading jurisdiction for international arbitration. The Act incorporates these main features: