Criminal law barristers have been accused of running “unsubstantiated whispering campaigns” and unfairly appealing “to their powerful friends in government” in their on-going battle with solicitor-advocates.

Michael Gove (pictured), the former lord chancellor and justice secretary, triggered an internecine professional slanging match in a speech this week. Gove said there was “no doubt that, individual for individual, barristers provide a better service” relative to solicitor-advocates in the criminal courts.

His broadside elicited a furious response from senior solicitors. Will Richmond-Coggan, the chairman of the Solicitors’ Association of Higher Court Advocates, lambasted the bar for using “protectionist tactics of trying to crowd out the newcomers with unsubstantiated whispering campaigns and appeals to their powerful friends in government”.

The solicitor said that barristers “want to impose artificial barriers to entry for any who seek to threaten their historic monopoly. The fruits of those campaigns can be seen in Mr Gove’s words, as he denigrates solicitor-advocates as second class, and seeks to suggest that only barristers should be entitled to represent defendants in Crown Court, or serious magistrates’ court, cases.”

Richmond-Coggan went on to say it was “no surprise that the Bar and their mouthpieces in government would seek to harken back to an age where upstart solicitors knew their place, and existed purely to ferry a steady stream of golden guineas into the hands of the barristers’ clerks – barristers’ hands being too rarefied to be sullied with anything so vulgar as money”.

However, he remained confident that the “established status quo” would have to give way and that barristers would ultimately recognise “that times change even for them. Solicitor advocates have considerable experience of standing firm in the face of discrimination and prejudice, and they are here to stay, whether the bar likes it or not”.

Television personalities, actors and footballers were among 29 celebrities who collected a total of more than £500,000 in the latest awards of damages for illegal phone hacking in the High Court yesterday.

The stars – including the actresses Abi Titmuss and Jayne Walton, the Eastenders actor Steve McFadden, the TV personality Natasha Kaplinsky and the former Premier League footballer Sol Campbell – were the latest of many to accept damages from Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) over accessing of their voicemails.

The only figure mentioned in court was the £40,000 paid to Walton. The other 28 settlements referred to either “substantial” or just “damages”. Others include the actor William Mellor, well known for his roles in Hollyoaks, Casualty and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps; and the actress Sarah Parish, who appeared in Dr Who, Hearts and Bones and Cutting It.

Kim Waite, the solicitor for MGN, offered the publisher’s “sincere apologies” to all 29 claimants and said the company accepted that the systematic interception of voicemail messages and the procurement of private information should never have happened.

She told Mr Justice Mann, who approved all the settlements, that the publisher of The Daily and Sunday Mirror and The People “deeply regrets the wrongful acts” and the “damage and distress” caused. They undertook not to do the same in the future.

The awards are the latest of dozens that have been awarded by the newspaper group.

Europe’s biggest law school has been barred from using an advertisement that claimed its graduates routinely started on salaries of £54,000 and had “huge earning potential”.

A ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority found that there was not “adequate evidence” to support the claim made by the University of Law in national press and online advertisements. The university was also reprimanded for making the “misleading” claim that it was the UK’s “leading law school”.

The ruling comes at a difficult time for the university, which within the last few weeks has appointed its fifth chief executive in the past two years. Stelios Platis, who recently suddenly departed from the law school’s top slot, has been replaced by Andrea Nollent, according the law school’s owners, Global University Systems.

Commenting on the finding regarding its advertisement, a university spokeswoman said: “While we are disappointed by the ruling, we have taken on board the comments from the ASA and are working closely with them currently to agree the best way forward.”

Law firms acting for insurance companies predictably spent much of yesterday fawning over ministers after the government proposed to crackdown on the “compensation culture” by capping – or abolishing – whiplash claims.

The announcement by the Ministry of Justice split the legal profession along claimant and defendant lines, with the language varying from the diplomatic to the hysterical.

In the former camp was the Forum of Insurance Lawyers, the body that represents firms acting for insurance companies. “There is a great opportunity now for significant reform,” said the forum’s president, Nigel Teasdale, a partner at DWF. “We need to focus on getting the detail right to deliver a workable, effective new process.”

Mark Hemsted, a partner at Clyde & Co, a leading defendant law firm, continued with that theme of restrained welcome. "The overall thrust of the proposed reforms is to move towards lower cost claims and, as a consequence, for there to be fewer claims,” he said.

However, Hemsted did hint that the proposals came with an element of controversy. “With the potential for smaller payouts and more use of the small claims court,” he said, “claimant solicitors might find this work doesn't pay and therefore you might get new entrants, such as the claims management companies into this space. Either that or individuals will be unrepresented in court, something that won't appeal to the majority of people."

That was not even the half of it, according to some claimant lawyers. “Once again the rights of injured people are the target and it is hugely unjust,” railed Vidisha Joshi, a partner at Hodge Jones & Allen, the London law firm. “Capping compensation at such low levels will mean victims are left out in the cold. Our firm will do all it can to counter this heavy-handed approach by government.”

And even though claims management companies might benefit, at least one opposed the proposals, describing them as “far worse than anyone could have anticipated”.

Qamar Anwar, the managing director of First4Lawyers, continued by claiming that the reforms would “do nothing other than to benefit the insurance industry fat cats at the expense of innocent accident victims”.

Caught in the middle was the Law Society, which has members with skin in both sides of this game. However, the representative body plumped for backing claimant solicitors, as its president said that the proposals would “completely undermine the right of ordinary people to receive full and proper compensation from those that have injured them – often seriously – through negligence".

Robert Bourns added that the government’s plan for a five-fold increase in the small claims limit to £5,000 “will stop people getting the legal advice they need. “People may be tempted to try to bring claims themselves without expert advice. This will clog up the court system creating a David and Goliath situation where people recovering from their injuries act as litigants in person without legal advice – those defending claims can often afford to pay for legal advice.”

See Blue Bag below

Regulation for the chemical heads

Look no farther than the chemicals industry for an example of how the UK’s departure from the EU involves minute detail, writes Edward Fennell.

With chemicals much of the regulating law originates from Brussels. This includes in particular the single market-related REACH – that is the regulation on the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals, for the uninitiated – which is directly applicable in the UK, without the need for any domestic implementing legislation.

And there are other examples from the alphabet soup bowl – CLP (regulation on classification, labelling and packaging of substances and mixture) and the BPR (biocidal products regulation).

As Elizabeth Shepherd, a partner at Eversheds, points out, given that the chemicals industry is the UK’s largest manufacturing exporter, contributing £60 million a day to the economy, the terms of the exit and any transitional period are critically important.

“The government increasingly recognises that certain regulations cannot simply be rolled forward into UK law when we leave the EU,” she says. “Whether and how REACH, CLP and the BPR are to be implemented in the UK is subject to wider questions including the UK’s place, if any, in the single market, and the UK’s ability to rely on EU institutions to perform certain functions, even in the short term, post-Brexit.”

Much of EU law that regulates the chemical sector, Shepherd explains, has dynamic elements that require the involvement of Brussels institutions, notably the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) in the case of REACH, and the European Commission in the case of the BPR.

“This will not be available post-Brexit and we run the clear risk of zombie laws, which the UK cannot apply or interpret effectively. Detailed consideration is needed of the changes which will be required, not least to introduce the Health and Safety Executive – or another body – in place of the ECHA. As part of the exit negotiations, the UK may look to incorporate some transitional provisions into the withdrawal agreement, allowing a continued role for ECHA at least in the short term.”

Another significant concern, says the Eversheds team, is that if the EU refuses to recognise UK REACH-equivalent registrations, additional registrations will need to be made by importers. “This may result in EU customers choosing an alternative supplier rather than facing additional burdens themselves under these regimes."

Keeping disputes in English courts

The best way of ensuring that contractual disputes are heard in the English courts before and after Brexit is for parties to continue to include dispute resolution clauses that provide for the Courts of England and Wales to have exclusive jurisdiction. That is the view of London’s litigation fraternity, which has published a guide for surviving Brexit.

The London Solicitors Litigation Association claims that specific clauses will be enforceable throughout the EU post-Brexit, assuming the UK signs the Hague convention on choice of court agreements, which is likely.

According to the association, parties can continue to select English law to govern their agreements safe in the knowledge that the remaining EU states “will be obliged under the Rome I and Rome II regulations to recognise that choice” – even after Brexit.

The litigation lawyers add that “to avoid post-Brexit uncertainty and complexity when it comes to effecting service of process in the EU, it will be prudent for parties expressly to appoint process agents in their commercial agreements”.

Rio Tinto terminates top lawyer’s contract amid mining payments probe – The Lawyer

Human rights lawyer Phillipe Sands wins literature prize – Jewish Chronicle

Phowoar and order: Israeli lawyer becomes internet sensation – The Sun

Obituary: Daniel Hollis, QC --The Times