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| Wednesday March 27 2019 |
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By Jonathan Ames
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Plans for the brave new world of online courts have been hit by gremlins, complaints over expensive phone advice lines and now allegations that faking wills will be made easier. See our lead story for details.
Elsewhere, a student has been convicted of stalking a top government lawyer; Linklaters is the first “magic circle” firm to pay for gender reassignment surgery; and prospective advocates are told to imagine that judges are daft or bored.
And scroll down to our Blue Bag diary to learn about a bit of Hollywood stardust that landed on Middle Temple at the weekend. All that and more in this morning’s must-read of all things legal, including news, comment and gossip.
Catherine Baksi, a freelance legal affairs journalist, contributed to today’s bulletin.
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Today
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EXCLUSIVE: ONLINE PROBATE ‘INCREASES FRAUD RISK’
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Speedboat killer to return to UK
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EU passes law forcing tech giants to police copyright
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Comment: McKenzie friends clampdown would be disastrous
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| Tweet us @timeslaw with your views. |
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Story of the Day
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Online probate ‘increases fraud risk’
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Fake wills are likely to go undetected under plans to outsource verification of online probate applications to a private company, a union has warned.
Under the government proposals, work historically done by experienced civil servants in the Probate Service to verify the authenticity of wills is to be done using “bulk scanning and printing services”.
Richard Burgon, the shadow justice secretary (pictured), called on the government to think again.
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Read the full story
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Comment
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Clamping down on McKenzie friends would be disastrous for the poor
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Regulating unqualified legal aides would hinder vital services such as Citizens Advice and legal centres, writes Crispin Passmore
The case of Paul Wright has prompted lawyers to call for McKenzie friends to be regulated, perhaps with a ban on charging. The calls are well intentioned, predictable and wrong.
See also: Unqualified, unregulated legal advisers must be stopped
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Read the full story
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News round-up
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Speedboat killer Jack Shepherd to return to UK
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Jack Shepherd, the British man dubbed the speedboat killer, has ditched his fight against extradition from Georgia and will return to the UK to appeal against his conviction.
He was convicted of manslaughter in his absence by a UK court last July for the death of Charlotte Brown, 24, who was thrown from his boat on the Thames during a first date.
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Read the full story
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EU passes law forcing tech giants to police copyright
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Google and Facebook will be forced to take responsibility for copyrighted material on their platforms after the European parliament backed controversial reforms.
The copyright directive, which was passed by 348 votes to 274, is intended to ensure that tech companies compensate publishers, artists and musicians fairly for their work. Critics claim, however, that it will limit freedom of expression and described the vote as a “massive blow”.
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Read the full story
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Rape-claim student faces jail for stalking government lawyer
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A law student who falsely claimed that she was a “sex slave” for a senior government lawyer may be jailed after being convicted of stalking yesterday (David Brown writes).
Sana Musharraf, who is Muslim, said that she feared being killed by Islamist extremists if they learnt that she had lost her virginity to Jason Whiston (pictured), deputy director of the Government Legal Department.
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Read the full story
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Linklaters is first ‘magic circle’ firm to pay for gender surgery
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Gender reassignment surgery will be available to transgender lawyers and staff at Linklaters under its enhanced private medical insurance scheme, the firm has announced.
Linklaters is the first of the five “magic circle” law firms to include the benefit, which was introduced this month. Herbert Smith Freehills, the Anglo-Australian practice, became the first law firm to offer it last year.
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Read the full story
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Advice for new barristers: treat the judge as daft
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In words that could have come straight from the wizened brain of Rumpole of the Bailey today’s pupil barristers are being advised to treat judges as though they are “a bit daft”.
Paul Nicholls, a barrister and solicitor-advocate based in the West Midlands, eschewed the idea of a lengthy essay for a learned legal journal and reached straight for Twitter instead.
He tweeted to aspiring advocates that “elevating your voice, keeping it simple and coherent, and talking slower than you think you need, has the benefit of keeping you on track, able to understand, and coherent.”
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Read the full story
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In Brief
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- Majority backs Brexit revocation as lawyers lose faith in Labour and Tories – The Lawyer
- Solicitor led 'Ponzi' ruse to suck investors into doomed scheme – Law Gazette
- Nike fined £11m for blocking sales of football shirts – The Times
Clarifications
The reference to Elizabeth Hart in yesterday’s Brief was in error. Instead the subject of the legal challenge should have referred to Mrs Pepe Hart, represented by Keystone Law.
The attorney-general’s office has asked us to point out that Geoffrey Cox, QC, did not oversee the failed application for an unduly lenient sentence appeal referred to in yesterday’s Brief. Instead it was the solicitor-general, Robert Buckland, QC, who referred the case at the instigation of a member of the public after it met the tests required.
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Comment
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Warning solicitors against aiding tax avoidance risks undermining the rule of law
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The Solicitors Regulation Authority must clarify its muddled guidance, writes Michael Blackwell
In issuing the warning notice the SRA has arguably breached its own legal obligation to uphold the rule of law by limiting the availability of legal advice to citizens.
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Read the full story
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Quote of the day
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“If we ask for everything to stay the same, with continuing liberal access to practise and our use of others’ legal systems, we will be accused of wanting to have our cake and eat it. But what should we give up?”
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Jonathan Goldsmith, a council member at the Law Society, writing in the Law Gazette on what lawyers want from Brexit.
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Read the full story
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Comment
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Unqualified, unregulated legal advisers must be stopped
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After a disabled man won £260,000 from a “McKenzie friend” who ruined his medical negligence claim, MPs need to intervene, writes Colm Nugent
Paul Wright was a desperate man in 2008. He had undergone a disastrous NHS operation four years earlier, issued a claim for medical negligence, but still had no legal representation. He then unknowingly entered the world of paid “McKenzie friends”, advisers with no legal qualifications, no rights to represent people in a court, no insurance and no regulators. Yet they charge handsomely for legal advice.
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Read the full story
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Blue Bag
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Hollywood glamour comes to Middle Temple
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Middle Temple hall is used to theatricals — and not just from its barrister members.
In 1602 it was the venue for the first performance of Twelfth Night, and the Supreme Court president, Lady Hale, the former lord chief justice Lord Judge, and the head of criminal justice, Sir Brian Leveson, have all performed there.
But never before has it played host to a Hollywood A-lister yelling “F*** you”.
On Sunday evening Cate Blanchett graced the hall to star in the world premiere of The Land of the Free, a radio-style play performed to raise money for the Kalisher Trust, which helps students from non-traditional backgrounds to train for a career at the Bar.
In the play, written by Diane Samuels, Blanchett took the role of Rosa Gold, an American lawyer whose career is cut short after she is accused of being a Communist spy. Her husband, Joe Gold, defends her and years later seeks to help her lesbian lover, Heidi Menken, an activist and female radical who has been jailed for her part in protest attacks.
The play draws on conversations between Samuels and American communists, and the final scene is based on a meeting she had with the jailed activist Laura Whitehorn in 1997.
Given that the cast, which also included Martin Shaw of Judge John Deed fame, the performances were top notch - no mean feat considering they had only rehearsed for half a day.
The audience was as star-studded as the cast, including the barrister Amal Clooney, the former Conservative attorney-general Dominic Grieve, and the former Labour leader Ed Miliband.
Speaking to The Brief after the performance, Blanchett said: “When I learnt about the work of the Kalisher Trust it just seemed so foundational in changing the nature of the make-up of the legal profession and making it more inclusive.” On the play, she added: “It’s talking about a whole lot of grey areas which the law has to uphold and delve into – things aren’t black and white.”
Clooney would not be drawn on the contemporary significance of the play, but said “it was brilliant”.
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Closing Statement
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Hearing difficulties at the hearings
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On one of the regular occasions when magistrates were being asked to make their courts more friendly, I was at Barnet and a defendant was clearly not hearing clearly (James Morton writes).
The chairman beckoned him to the bench and kindly asked: “Bit mutt, then are you?’ using the traditional cockney rhyming slang for deaf (namely, Mutt and Jeff).
Staff took over this sort of problem at the court in west London, where one of the magistrates, Alan Stevenson, as well as one defendant, were both a bit mutt.
Stevenson asked the man what he did for a living and the reply came: “I’ve seven children.”
“What did he say?” asked Stevenson.
It was left to the gaoler to resolve the confusion. “The magistrate wants to know what you do in the day time,” he bellowed at the unfortunate man.
James Morton is a former criminal law solicitor and now author
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