Legal Profession

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

A sad farewell to Solicitors’ Journal

When ICLR was founded in 1865, the Solicitors Journal was already almost a decade old. For many years, the two publishers have been associated, principally through the legal case summaries which ICLR’s reporters have contributed to the magazine. Earlier this month, the journal’s current owners made the no doubt agonising decision to close it down. Continue reading

The legacy of LASPO

It is four years since the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 came into effect, on April Fool’s day 2013. The Act itself was passed five years ago. Its effects, as we predicted at the time, have been seismic. Image: The Manifesto of Justice (from UK General Election 2015) The policy behind the Continue reading

McKenzie Friendly fire?

The controversy over so-called ‘professional’ or paid McKenzie Friends  flared up again last week. Paul Magrath reports on what is often a regulatory minefield. Image from McKenzie Friends Marketplace website A new outfit, called McKenzie Friends Marketplace (MFM) has been set up by Fraser Matcham, a second year law student in London, as a sort of Continue reading

Justice down the rabbit-hole: Fulford LJ on the Rise of the Cyber Judge

With the creation of the online court, the principle of open justice must not be overlooked, said Lord Justice Fulford, giving the annual University of Sussex Draper Lecture 2016 at the Law Society on Tuesday, 8 November. Justice, he said, must not “disappear down an Alice-style rabbit-hole”. But it soon became clear to many in Continue reading

Regulation roundabout: legal services at a critical turning – where to now?

A number of stories about legal services regulation have surfaced over the last few months, some of them calling into question the future of legal regulation, if not the professions they regulate, and most of them pointing back in some way to the regulators’ regulator, the Legal Services Board (LSB). This roundup covers the most interesting or Continue reading

Pupillage advice: words of wisdom for pupils

As she settles into her training for life at the Bar, Sophia Stapleton, winner of the inaugural ICLR Pupillage Award, has been collecting nuggets of advice from barristers and judges on what to expect and how to deal with it. In this post she shares some of those words of wisdom.   Like many other pupils across the 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

Bundles of joy – CPR Practice Direction 52C, para 33

Law reporters have always depended on the goodwill of advocates and instructing solicitors in providing copies of pleadings, skeleton arguments and authorities bundles to help in the process of reporting important precedents. In the past, such help was sought and given unofficially. Although there has been a series of practice directions on how court bundles Continue reading