Blog

News, analysis, comment and updates from ICLR's case law and UK legislation platform

Book review: The Heirs of Owain Glyndŵr by Peter Murphy

Paul Magrath reviews a mesmerising new courtroom thriller in which Peter Murphy’s ambitious barrister hero Ben Schroeder takes on a challenging case involving a Welsh nationalist bomb plot.  All the details of barristerial life, the rules of ethics and evidence, and the courtroom procedure appropriate for the 1960s period setting are pitch perfect. Yet is Continue reading

Pupillage Applications: Surviving Rejection

Sophia Stapleton, winner of the inaugural ICLR Pupillage Award, offers some advice based on her own experience in applying for, and getting, a pupillage.   “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” — Albert Einstein   Getting pupillage can be hard. A rejection does not mean that all Continue reading

The ICLR Pupillage Award’s first winner: Sophia Stapleton

This is the first year that the ICLR have given a pupillage award, which is worth £12,000 for a barrister, taken on as a pupil in a set of chambers doing mainly publicly funded work, and in receipt of an existing pupil award from those chambers of no more than £14,000. The award was launched Continue reading

Law Podcasts: a selection

Podcasts are a great way of keeping up to date with radio programmes about law, but they can also deliver a series of instalments of a longer, more detailed or complex narrative. They’re easy to download and store on a smartphone or other device, using one of the dedicated apps. (I use the Podcasts app Continue reading

Archbold v Blackstone

True. The news that in July a small panel of judges (the Judicial Executive Board) decided that Blackstone’s Criminal Practice should replace Archbold as the standard text in the Crown Court is hardly front-page material. However, it’s precisely the sort of thing a law publisher with a criminal law background like me geeks out on. Continue reading

If music be the food of law, plead on…

The Little Book of Music Law, by Amber Nicole Shavers. Reviewed by Paul Magrath.   As demonstrated by the recent litigation over claims that one of the most famous rock anthems of all time, Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”, was partly filched from another song, the opportunities for legal disputes in the world of music Continue reading

#ALLA2016Conf – Melbourne, here we come! (Updated)

Team ICLR is in Melbourne, Victoria, for the 2016 conference of the Australian Law Librarians’ Association. The conference is being held at the State Library Victoria, from 24 to 26 August and ICLR is happy to be a Silver Sponsor. We’ll be keeping you informed of events via this conference diary, which will appear in reverse date Continue reading

Lies, damned lies, and insurance claims

In this guest post, Gillian Palmer examines two recent decisions of the Supreme Court on the question of lies and exaggerations made by a party in the course of making claims for losses covered by insurance.     Sweet Little Lies: Insurance Versloot Dredging v HDI Gerling [2016] UKSC 45;  [2016] 3 WLR 543;  [2016] WLR Continue reading

Weekly Notes: legal news from ICLR – 29 July 2016

This week’s roundup of legal news and commentary is the last before the summer recess. Weekly Notes will resume at the start of the next law term in October. Keep an eye on the blog, however, because we’ll still be doing other posts. In the meantime, enjoy a Brexit-free roundup including court modernisation, patents, professional Continue reading