Revised plans to expedite immigration and asylum claims from those held in detention will sacrifice justice for speed, it was claimed yesterday.

The government wants to create a fast-track process to deal with a growing backlog of cases but lawyers said that if ministers implement the system they will “put more onus on speed than they do on justice and fairness”.

Despite suffering a setback in July last year when the Court of Appeal ruled that the government’s initial proposals were unfair, ministers have recently consulted on a new plan that lawyers said involved only minor tweaks. The main reform the government has proposed since the Court of Appeal ruling has been to extend the fast-track process from 12 days to 25.

In a response to the Home Office, the Law Society, the body that represents solicitors in England and Wales, said the revised proposals “would disproportionately affect groups already vulnerable to discrimination”. The society hints that the revised plans may still breach discrimination legislation “as the vast majority of immigration appeal applicants” are from ethnic minority backgrounds.

The society also claims that the government’s proposals do not adequately describe how vulnerable applicants will be exempted from the fast-track process. “It would be extremely damaging to detain someone with mental health issues, who has been tortured or raped,” it added.

Commenting on the revised Home Office plan, Robert Bourns, the society’s president, said: “There is a real risk that speed may prejudice the integrity of the appeal process, for people who are often extremely vulnerable and anxious, who may have suffered a terrifying ordeal.

“There must be judicial oversight of asylum and immigration appeals. We believe quicker, fair hearings can be more reliably achieved under the existing rules with a better resourced appeal system.”

Online law firm comparison tools are the single best way of boosting transparency about fees and service in the legal profession, the lawyers’ regulator said yesterday.

It called on the competition watchdog to support efforts to generate wider awareness of existing consumer sites, claiming there is rising public demand for more
information about the legal services market.

Responding to the Competition and Markets Authority study of so-called digital comparison tools (DCTs), the Solicitors Regulation Authority made it biggest pitch yet for greater trenchancy in law firm offerings. “Increased coverage of the legal services market by comparison websites would be the single best way to enable consumers to compare legal services providers,” it said.

It pointed to a four-year-old survey that found 42 per cent of consumers said they would use legal services comparison sites. “We want to support the increased availability and use of DCTs in the legal services market as we believe this would bring many benefits to consumers, particularly as a tool to make informed decisions,” it added.

“In addition, there is evidence that comparison websites which provide customer feedback can stimulate competition over quality and raise standards.”

The SRA pointed out that many law firms are reluctant to provide information to comparison websites. It told the CMA that the reasons for that reluctance “may be worth exploring and considering”.

A Royal Marine has won a five-year legal battle for compensation that could amount to millions of pounds after contracting a rare disease while serving in Afghanistan as judges struck out the government’s defence.

Phillip Eaglesham contracted “Q fever” while on a routine tour of south Afghanistan in 2010. He initially became ill with flu-like symptoms but went on to develop Q fever chronic fatigue syndrome – an illness that has left him profoundly disabled.

The High Court in London struck out the Ministry of Defence’s arguments after it ruled that officials failed to meet their legal obligation to provide copies of all documents relevant to the case despite being granted an additional 15 months to compile the materials.

According to Eaglesham’s lawyers, the claim succeeds in full and the only outstanding issue is the amount of compensation. It is understood that Eaglesham could be entitled to a figure in the “many millions”.

Sue Bowler, a partner at Coffin Mew, the law firm that acted for Eaglesham, said: “Phillip’s case against the Ministry of Defence has been pursued so that he can pay for the specialist care, equipment and housing that he will need for the rest of his life and to help other military personnel who contracted the same illness in Afghanistan and are also pursuing claims.

“Phillip has gone from being a strong fit Royal Marine to someone with very severe disability, all because of contracting Q fever. It has never been about the money for him, no amount could take away his suffering and that of his family.”

A spokesman for the MoD said: “We are studying the judgement and it would be inappropriate to comment further”

Law firms are woefully slack in sticking to litigation budgets, a survey has revealed.

Just 2 per cent of costs specialists, formerly known as costs draftsmen, say they routinely work with solicitors that always adhered to their budgets.

Nearly a quarter of costs lawyers exceeded their budgets in individual cases, said respondents to a survey from the Association of Costs Lawyers. More than 70 per cent of costs lawyers said that solicitors “sometimes” overshot budgets agreed at the outset of litigation.

The association speculated that one reason solicitors are missing budget targets is that the process takes place too early in proceedings. Half of costs lawyers said that instead of setting budgets at the first case management conference, the hearing should be held later “once the course of the litigation is clearer”.

Judges were also blamed. More than 60 per cent of costs lawyers said “it depends on which judge you’re before” in assessing how well the budgeting regime is working. Nearly a third of respondents claimed that “judicial inconsistency” was “killing” the three-year-old scheme. Only 10 per cent of costs lawyers said that judges generally operated budgeting well.

Iain Stark, chairman of the ACL, said that costs budgeting “has been of benefit in some instances” but “has not delivered in the way that was hoped. This is, at least in part, because many solicitors have still not properly engaged with the process, even though they risk court sanctions as a result.”

Britain’s biggest ever class action lawsuit, involving a £14 billion claim against one of the world’s biggest credit card companies, will kick off early in the new year.

A specialist tribunal will sit on January 18 to determine whether the case against MasterCard, which allegedly imposed excessive fees on UK retailers for 16 years, can be heard as a collective action.

The lead claimant, Walter Merricks, the former financial services ombudsman, argues that the case should be heard under the provisions of the Consumer Rights Act, which came into force last year. Merricks, who has instructed the City of London office of Quinn Emanuel, a specialist US firm of litigators, has this week launched a website updating consumers on the action.

EU regulators have already found MasterCard charged unlawful cross-border interchange fees between 1992 and 2008. Merricks claims that the fees were passed on by retailers in the form of increased retail prices charged to consumers. The claimants case is that all UK consumers and not just MasterCard holders who made purchases in the relevant period should be eligible for compensation if the claim is successful.

Lawyers for Merricks said that consumers will automatically be included in the case and will be eligible for any compensation and will not need to do anything to register a claim at this stage.

A leading immigration barrister was disbarred after more than 40 different complaints to the legal ombudsman over two years.

Complaints about Tariq Rehman, the head of Kings Court Chambers in Birmingham, included overcharging, failing to perform work after being instructed, not providing client care letters and not providing refunds.

Rehman’s disbarment came after two separate tribunal decisions that resulted in suspensions totalling 41 months.

The Bar Standards Board said yesterday that it also inspected the chambers, “leading to the discovery of further and more systemic failures” in how it was run.
Sara Jagger, the regulator’s director of professional conduct, said Rehman had “accepted instructions on a public access basis in immigration matters, where clients were particularly vulnerable and the cases were potentially time-sensitive.

“The Tribunal’s decision to disbar Mr Rehman reflects the need to protect the public from his serious and persistent failures in this case and in the cases decided previously.”

Don’t bank on a passport

Philip Hammond’s autumn statement earlier this week arguably could have been renamed the “autumnal statement” since the chancellor’s underlying tone suggested the UK is entering a period of gradual decline and slowdown. Does a Brexit Winter lie ahead? And if so, how can we prepare for it?

Charles Proctor, a partner at City of London law firm Fladgate, has been analysing how Brexit could affect banking. By now, the concept of “passporting” in financial services has become increasingly familiar and the suggestion is that the UK might continue to enjoy its current status based on the principle of equivalence.

Nonetheless, the rules are complicated and, as Proctor points out, in a globalised business “the location from which a service is provided may not always be entirely clear”. But the consequence is that post-Brexit “transactions will have to be structured carefully and will thus carry additional costs”.

As a result, Proctor continues, “the loss of the EU passport will clearly place UK banks at a significant competitive disadvantage when seeking business from customers within the EU. UK banks that have provided facilities to customers in other EU member states will therefore need to plan carefully for Brexit and review their loan portfolios.”

Specific issues that will need to be addressed include an analysis of whether any of those facilities been provided on the basis of a services passport into the other member state; if so, will it become unlawful to maintain, renew or enforce that loan post-Brexit when the passport expires; and based on that analysis, and if necessary, the bank may need to consider whether the facility should be transferred to a subsidiary authorised or passported in another member state.

According to Proctor, “matters may become even more complex in considering new business opportunities”. For example, should a UK bank provide, or participate in, a five-year loan to finance the purchase of real estate in Germany? The UK will have left the EU by the time of the final repayment date, and the UK bank’s passport into Germany will therefore have expired. In the absence of a suitable banking permission, the UK bank may find that its right to enforce repayment of the loan and/or its security is challenged by the borrower.

Proctor speculates that there might be agreed transitional arrangements for deals with this type of problem. But, for the present, this must be categorised as a “known unknown”. The trouble is that there are also likely to be many unknown unknowns out there.

Hammond reveals plans to tackle 'partnership taxation' in autumn statement – Legal Business

'We're looking for raw intelligence': law tutors share Oxbridge interview tips – The Guardian

15,000 lawyers sign letter opposing Trump’s appointment of Steve Bannon as top aide – The Huffington Post