One of the UK’s most senior judges has stepped into the furore over maintenance for divorcees, saying that wives on occasion should be granted a “meal ticket for life”.

Lord Wilson, a Supreme Court judge and family law expert, said it was “unrealistic” to leave a wife at the age of 60 after a long marriage to fend for herself after just three years of maintenance.

He was speaking as pressure mounts for maintenance awards to ex-wives to be limited to three years to mirror the position in Scotland, where that limit is a rule that is varied from only in exceptional circumstances.

In a speech released yesterday, Lord Wilson said it was “usually unrealistic to tell a wife, left on her own perhaps at age 60 after a long marriage, that following payments for say three years she must fend for herself.” Judges, he added, had to “strike a difficult balance”.

And in a sideswipe at critics of judges who make such awards, he said that it “betrayed a lack of insight” when a peer last month suggested that when judges did decide to award long-term maintenance, they were “motivated by antiquated notions of chivalry”.

He was referring to Baroness Deech, a cross-bench peer, who has tabled a private member’s bill calling for a three-year cap on most maintenance payments. The bill has passed its second reading in the House of Lords.

Lady Deech said in a recent newspaper interview: “Our judges are being very old fashioned I’m afraid. They are over-chivalrous and the way they were in the 19th century. People wonder why, 15 years after a marriage has ended, one person has to keep paying money to another.”

In his speech to students at the University of Bristol this week, Lord Wilson said that these “would-be reformers [of the divorce laws] lack experience of practice in the present system.

“I suspect that they believe too readily what they read in the papers and that they regarded the exceptional cases as the norm. This leads them to exaggerate the difficulties of the current system and to ignore the virtue of principles which have a sufficient degree of elasticity to enable a reasonable result to be fitted to each case.”

Britain’s Brexit negotiators must cut a deal that allows UK lawyers to continue to have rights to practise across the EU, MPs will argue today.

A report from the House of Commons justice committee says that the legal services sector “underpins many areas of UK economic activity” and that “its ability to continue to facilitate these in the EU will diminish without protection of existing practising rights there for UK lawyers”.

Releasing the report, Bob Neill, MP, the committee’s barrister chairman, said: “The UK’s legal services sector makes a £25.7 billion annual economic contribution.

“It relies on openness, and its lawyers’ current rights to practise across EU member states help small businesses and ordinary people as well as large firms and wealthy individuals. We recommend that the government protect these powers.”

The MPs’ report also called for UK family court rulings to be enforced in the EU to prevent child abduction and the non-payment of maintenance. The committee has drafted a list of demands that it claims is vital for continued co-operation with the remaining EU states on legal issues after the UK leaves the bloc.

They include the possibility of maintaining the European arrest warrant and continued association with Europol and Eurojust, two EU organisations that provide cross-border support for police, prosecutors and judges. The committee also argues for continued formal arrangements for sharing between Britain and the EU of information on suspects’ criminal records and biometric data.

The MPs’ report disputes suggestions from hardline Brexiteers that it will be desirable for the UK to ditch completely the jurisdiction of Europe’s highest court, the Court of Justice of the EU. “It remains unclear how civil justice co-operation will work without the CJEU or another court playing a limited arbitral role,” say the MPs.

A terminally ill motor neurone disease sufferer wants to change the law so that he can choose when to end his own life rather than wait for death by choking or suffocation, judges were told yesterday.

Noel Conway, a retired college lecturer, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in November 2014 and is not expected to live beyond the next 12 months.

He told judges in evidence: “I’m bringing this case not just for me, but for all others facing terminal illness who want and deserve to have the option of a safe, dignified assisted death available to them in the UK.”

In the latest challenge to the Suicide Act 1961, Conway is seeking leave for a judicial review of the ban on assisted dying so that terminally ill adults who meet strict safeguards could decide when to end their lives. He argues that the law is incompatible with Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which protects private and family life, and Article 14, which protects people from discrimination.

Conway, 67 – who attended the hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice London in a wheelchair with an oxygen mask – used to hike, cycle and travel. However, his deteriorating condition means that while retaining full mental capacity, his ability to move, dress, eat and deal with personal care independently has diminished considerably.

He is now dependent on a ventilator to breathe overnight and much of the day but wants the option of an assisted death when he reaches the final six months of his life. His barrister, Richard Gordon, QC, of Brick Court Chambers in the Temple, said: “Mr Conway wishes to die in the country in which he was born and has lived for his whole adult life.

“The choices facing him therefore are stark: to seek to bring about his own death now whilst he is physically able to do but before he is ready; or await death with no control over when and how it comes.”

Lord Justice Burnett, sitting with Mr Justice Charles and Mr Justice Jay, said the judges would reserve their decision “only for a relatively short time”.

Reforms to business rates will land many of the UK’s leading law firms with a collective bill for more than £30 million, commercial property experts predict today.

It is estimated that the100 law firms that take the most space in London – in total 10m sq ft – face a rise in business rates of nearly 20 per cent.

Law firms in the capital have been hit with a double dose of property cost increases as rents have crept up by 5 per cent over the past five years. According to an annual survey by CBRE, a property consultancy, total annual rent costs in 2016 were £472 million for those firms. The report goes on to show that nearly 20 per cent of those 100 firms have adopted full open-plan layouts, double the number five years ago. A further 10 per cent of law firms are operating in mixed open plan-cellular configurations, say the researchers.

The researchers claim that cost is the main motivation behind forcing lawyers to ditch their individual offices. On average, firms with open-plan designs occupy 40 per cent less space and pay 35 per cent less per fee earner than those in traditional layouts.

Law firms should offer clients clear and “easily accessible” fee information, the legal services consumer watchdog says today as the profession prepares to implement measures dictated by the competition authority.

In a report on “information remedies”, the Legal Services Consumer Panel calls on the lawyer regulators to crack down on any attempt to confuse lay-clients with complicated fee structures.

The panel’s report to the Legal Services Board – the umbrella oversight body for all branches of the profession in England and Wales – comes after calls from the Competition and Markets Authority for law firms to publish fee information. “We know that information can empower consumers and encourage them to make informed decisions and that this is good for competition,” said Jane Martin, the panel’s chairwoman.

“We also know that information remedies are only effective when they meet certain criteria such as being simply presented, easily accessible, provided at the time of need.”

The panel acknowledges that the CMA’s recommendations “had the potential to have a long-lasting and positive impact” on the legal market. However, it warns that “there is a danger of overwhelming consumers with information”.

Information watchdog marks own homework; says it didn't break law over Prince Charles request – The Register

Bar’s public access work grows six-fold in only five years – Legal Futures

Saudi Arabia ‘expects Donald Trump to scrap 9/11 victims law’ – The Independent