Leading legal figures have leapt to the defence of the new Lord Chancellor in the face of strong attacks that her appointment downgrades the justice system.

Lord Faulks, who has resigned as justice minister, and Lord Falconer of Thoroton, former Lord Chancellor, have both expressed concerns about Liz Truss’s lack of experience and seniority. They have questioned whether she has the clout and independence to stand up for the judges and justice system within government.

Yesterday, Bob Neill, the chairman of the Commons justice committee, expressed similar concerns, saying that he would be writing to her to seek an urgent meeting with his committee. It was not necessary for the Lord Chancellor to have a legal background but without either that, or senior experience of cabinet, it would be hard to fulfil the role, he said.

However, Ben Summerskill, director of the Criminal Justice Alliance, said: “Critics of the appointment of the first woman Lord Chancellor in 800 years do overlook the fact that the near-monopoly of male appointments to the judiciary during that time has not been an unqualified success.”

Dame Fiona Woolf, a former Law Society president and Lord Mayor of the City of London from 2013-14, said that Truss's appointment sent "a strong message about women in senior positions in the legal profession and the judiciary, which now recognise the need to make progress with the diversity and inclusion agenda".

And another former society president, Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, said that unlike her two laymen predecessors who “came to the role with no obvious interest in justice and our civil, family, and criminal legal systems, [Truss] spent two years on the justice select committee. I hope this shows that she will be as effective in heading the Ministry of Justice as she has been in rocketing through the glass ceiling that has reserved the job for men until now.”

Legal professional bodies also welcomed her appointment. Catherine Dixon, the Law Society’s chief executive, claimed Truss’s appointment was “a moment of significant change for the country”.

A source close to Truss told The Guardian newspaper that the adverse comments were a "reaction to a woman being given a powerful job over a profession still dominated by elderly white men”.

British law firms turned in their fifth successive year of growth, with the profession racking up a record high fee total of nearly £31 billion, figures released this morning revealed.

But in a salutary warning for the top law firms in the City of London, the researchers said that the boom is being driven by mid-tier practices in the 25 to 50 bracket of the UK legal sector league table.

That 1.3 per cent rise in overall revenue came in conjunction with an 11 per cent increase in the value of legal services exports to another recording breaking figure of £3.6 billion. The legal sector’s trade surplus nearly doubled over the past ten years, which, according to the researchers, has helped partially to “offset the UK’s trade in goods deficit. The report found that the contribution to the UK’s economy from lawyers increased by more than 50 per cent over that decade.

In a report that oozed with a milk and honey tone, there were only passing references to future difficulties for the approximate 165,000 lawyers working across the UK in traditional law firms and barristers’ chambers.

However, the report – published by TheCityUK, a lobbying body for businesses in the Square Mile – acknowledged that 600 alternative business structure (ABS) licences have been issued, not least to three of the “big four” international accountancy practices. Other corporations with attached law firms under the ABS legislation include BT Group, Capita, Saga and the Automobile Association.

“These firms [are] aiming to offer a wider range of services to customers at a lower cost than traditional provides,” wrote the report’s authors ominously.

There were also warning signs for the larger City firms as the report showed that mid-tier and niche firms “continued their robust performance for the third year running”. Practices ranked between 25 and 50 in the UK by revenue on average had a 6 per cent rise in fee income, while those in the top 25 experienced a slight decline.

But generally the report claimed that the sun was shining today. It maintained that the UK is the world’s most international market for legal services and the “virtually unrestricted access it offers foreign firms” has resulted in more than 200 practices from about 40 jurisdictions establish offices in the City. And the Square Mile is the headquarters venue of two of the four largest international law firms, based on headcount.

The report also highlighted the UK’s leading role for dispute resolution – about 70 per cent of claims in the Admiralty and Commercial Courts in the first half of this year were international. In addition, more than 22,000 commercial and civil disputes were resolved through arbitration, mediation and adjudication in the UK last year.

Nonetheless, warned Chris Cummings, TheCityUK’s chief executive, traditional legal services providers should not be complacent. Changes to the structure of the legal profession were “accelerating the need for law firms to innovate and reconsider their offering and potential client base. We’re also seeing an increasing number of large firms choosing to locate operations in cities across the UK to take advantage of the skilled workforce and lower labour costs.”

Chambers are being encouraged to give rent reductions to barristers who are working part time in an attempt to make the bar more family-friendly.
Bar chiefs have published a “flexible working guide” for heads of chambers, which suggests policies designed to help lawyers with young families.

The advice highlights that many chambers are facing harsh financial pressures and as a result they “require certainty over income generated through rent and expenses”. According to the Bar Council of England and Wales, which produced the guidance, such a reaction “can make it difficult to work flexibly”.

The guide acknowledges that chambers use a variety of rent models, but it maintains that a flexible approach can be taken to all of them. For example flat rates can be reduced, and the percentage model can also be manipulated to give a better deal to those working part time.

“The Bar needs to retain talent and some accommodation for those who need to work flexibly to meet their personal needs can make financial sense as well as being the right thing to do,” said the Bar’s chairwoman, Chantal-Aimée Doerries, QC, launching the guidelines.

“The impact of flexible working on income also acts as a barrier where barristers are required to make a minimum or flat rate rent contribution,” Doerries said. “There may be a number of ways chambers could adapt rent to accommodate flexible working.”

Senior prosecutors hailed the conviction of a murder 34 years after the crime as evidence that serious offenders can be “brought to justice” regardless of how much time passes.

James Warnock, 56, was sentenced on Monday at the Old Bailey in London to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years for the murder of Yiannoulla Yianni,. 17, in London in 1982. Warnock, who was convicted last week, was also sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for raping the victim.

Police investigations after the murder resulted in no charges. But in August 2001 the case was formally re-opened as a result of advances in DNA techniques. Warnock was arrested for an unrelated matter in December 2015 and his DNA matched samples from the crime scene.

“This conviction should send a strong message that people who commit such serious crimes can be brought to justice many years later,” said Aisling Hosein, the London reviewing lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service. She said that the CPS was “committed to working with our police partners to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable for their actions”.

Europe’s biggest law school has cut an exclusive training deal with a London legal firm that the beleaguered institution will hope signals a return to form after losing a string of contracts to its arch rival.

The University of Law announced yesterday that it had signed Fladgate, one of the few prominent commercial firms remaining in the West End of London, to a three-year deal to be the sole provider of course for the firm’s trainees. Starting this September, all those offered a training contract with Fladgate will do their graduate diploma in law and legal practice course training at the university’s Moorgate branch in London.

However, the firm offers only about six training contracts annually, so the deal will go only a short distance towards covering the gap left in the university’s revenue caused when several big players ditched the institution. A little more than a year ago – and just after the university was sold to Global University Systems – the London office of Baker & McKenzie moved its training contract BPP University law school.

The US-based firm followed earlier moves to BPP by its English magic circle counterparts Allen & Overy and Clifford Chance. Other firms, such as DAC Beachcroft, have also swapped ULaw for BPP. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has been with BPP for some time, leaving Linklaters as the only London magic circle law firm on the books at the university.

Public procurement red tape – who to blame?

Public procurement presumably did not loom large in the minds of punters as they filed into polling booths on EU referendum day last month but in a post-Brexit world it will be a legal minefield nonetheless, writes Edward Fennell.

Indeed, it is “one of the areas of UK law most exposed to the consequences of the UK’s decision to leave the EU,” says Chris Tayton, partner at Clarks Legal, a Thames Valley and London law firm. According to Tayton, public procurement was “the type of legislation that many Brexiteers took most offence over – [seeing] them as diktats from unelected EU officials in the European Commission telling public authorities in the UK how to administer and award public contracts”.

However, and somewhat ironically, the UK had a hand in their formulation and discretion over the manner of their implementation into UK law through the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, the Utilities Regulations 2016, to name but two legislative instruments. Which raises a curious question: when the Leave campaign argued that that EU procurement rules cost the UK taxpayers £1.6 billion a year and wasted 1.9 million days in red-tape delays, who was really responsible? Brussels or London?

Fault probably lies in part with both is the frustrating answer. But as Tayton says: “The European Commission’s own report on procurement within the EU cited the UK’s procurement regime as the longest and most expensive of any member state, apart from Greece and Malta – so perhaps the UK’s implementation of the regulations should take some of the blame.”

Moreover, given Whitehall's love affair with gold-plating, it looks as though the situation isn’t going to change much when (and if) the great bonfire of Brussels red tape takes place. Or as Tayton puts it: “If the UK wants to continue accessing foreign procurement markets and allowing foreign businesses to compete in its own market, then it is likely that those procurement rules will be identical to or at least very similar to those presently in place.”

Soldiers’ families raise £40,000 to sue Blair over Iraq

Families of Britons killed in Iraq have raised more than £40,000 in a day in their effort to take legal action against Tony Blair over the findings of the Chilcot report, writes Sean O’Neill.

The families launched a crowdfunding campaign on Tuesday morning to finance a legal opinion with a view to preparing a complaint against the ex-prime minister and other former government ministers and officials for misfeasance in public office. Through the Crowd Justice website, the campaign hopes to raise up to £150,000 to mount a High Court action over the findings of the report into the conflict in Iraq from 2003-09.

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• CMS circles Olswang in merger bid – The Lawyer
  
• Top UK law firms could lose out on Brexit trade work – Legal Week
  
• Claims companies rapped by ad watchdog over settlement boasts – Law Gazette