Plus: Global cartel fines down $3.6bn
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The Times
Wednesday January 24 2018
The Brief
Frances Gibb Jonathan Ames
By Frances Gibb and Jonathan Ames
Good morning.

Who’d be a judge these days? If middle-brow newspapers aren’t accusing you of being an “enemy of the people”, elected politicians are shirking their own responsibilities and pushing tough social policy decisions on to your plate.

That, at least, is the view of Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd — and as the recently retired lord chief justice, the most senior judge in England and Wales, he should know.
But then, the head of the Bar in the same jurisdiction reckons that it’s not just judges that have it rough – lots of run-of-the mill lawyers in Europe face state-sponsored oppression and worse.

Probably best if you hunker down in a safe space while reading this morning’s must-read of all things legal, including news, comment and gossip. For more in-depth coverage ...
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Today
JUDGES SHOULD NOT RULE ON SOCIAL POLICY, SAYS EX-LORD CHIEF
Bar chief calls for lawyers to be protected from state-backed attacks
Law is failing British women, say campaigners
Worldwide cartel fines fall by $3.6 billion in a year
Digital conveyancing moves closer with rule change
Blue Bag diary: Health and wellbeing all the way from Pittsburgh
In the House: Data security is general counsel’s largest headache
Analysis: Road testing Co-op’s online divorce service
Scalp of the week: White collar crime duo hits the City
Analysis: Employment tribunals are heading for crisis
Tweet us @timeslaw with your views.
 
Story of the Day
Judges should back away from social policy rulings, says ex-lord chief
Politicians have given judges too much power to decide sensitive issues of social and public policy, a senior judicial figure said yesterday. Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who stepped down as lord chief justice last year, said that judges should not rule on issues such as assisted suicide.
Read the full story >
Scalp of the week
White collar crime duo hits the City
Ropes & Gray will have a formidable international risk practice when Judith Seddon joins as joint head with Amanda Raad, writes Linda Tsang
Read the full story >
News round-up
Protect lawyers from state-backed attacks, urges Bar chief
Lawyers must be protected against attacks by state agencies and individuals, English Bar leaders said ahead of a key meeting in Europe today. Andrew Walker, QC (pictured), chairman of the Bar Council, said there had been a “slew of attacks on legal professionals” over the past two years, with many of them committed by state officials.
Read the full story >
The law is failing British women, say campaigners
The UK's legal system is failing women and needs fundamental reform, a gender equality charity said yesterday as it called for a review of the admissibility of previous sexual history evidence in sexual offences trials. Campaigners said reports from independent sexual violence advisers showed that the law which restricts the use of a complainant’s sexual history as defence evidence in sexual offence cases was often ignored.
Read the full story >
Worldwide cartel fines fall by $3.6 billion in a year
Global cartel fines halved last year compared with 2016, with the EU leading the way in cutting back on financial penalties, figures published yesterday show. Global fines totalled $4.2 billion, down from $7.8 billion in 2016, with analysts arguing that the drop reflected fewer “blockbuster” prosecutions rather than a decrease in enforcement. The fall in fines in the EU was the steepest, down from $4.1 billion in 2016 to $1.3 billion last year.
Read the full story >
Government paves way for digital conveyancing
Buying and selling houses without the need for paper deeds moved closer yesterday as the government gave the nod to rules enabling digital land registration. The Land Registry said the move meant that the rules allowing digital conveyancing documents with e-signatures would be implemented by the April deadline.
Read the full story >
In Brief
  • Law firm partners predict rising revenues and more mergers – Legal Week
  • Judge blocks woman’s bid to prevent elderly father marrying – The Times
  • Doctors in court battle with unemployed brother over share of £1.8m fortune –The Times
Analysis
Road testing Co-op’s online divorce service
Claims that the retailer is speeding up the ‘quickie divorce’ have met with derision from lawyers, and Tony Roe finds that the service offers little that isn’t already available

Co-op Legal Services has been trumpeting the launch of its “fully comprehensive digital divorce service” recently, provoking a strong reaction from existing online providers and family law solicitors alike. But its service is not really that new or groundbreaking.
Read the full story >
Twitter
Tweet of the day
“For so long women were silent, thinking there was nothing you could do about it. But now the law is on the side of women or men who encounter harassment, and that’s a good thing.” https://t.co/pSxijVCKRD #metoo #RBG #NotoriousRBG # Ginsburn via @ABAJournal
@ABAJournal
Analysis
Employment tribunals are heading for crisis
With a spike in unfair dismissal claims after fees were abolished last summer, only greater transparency around awards will keep the system going, argues Jon Gilligan

Employment tribunals are bound to come under growing pressure from a substantial increase in cases after the abolition of fees in July last year.

Read the full story >
Blue Bag
Health and wellbeing all the way from Pittsburgh
An irony of modern legal practice is that while lawyers are meant to be trained to be specific and precise to an almost boring fault, many large commercial firms are diving headlong into the fuzzy world of mindfulness.

The London office of the US firm Reed Smith became the latest to jump on the bandwagon yesterday, launching its “wellness works” programme.

To be fair, the initiative is being driven by head office in that home of healthy living, the US “Steel City”, Pittsburgh. So not only is the scheme dubbed a “program”, but it is replete with effusive forecasts of the benefits of “stress management, work-life balance, healthy habits and health mindfulness” — all of which we are informed “encompasses more than physical fitness”.

No indication as to whether the worker-bees in the London office feel embarrassed by this post-est-style philosophy. But it would not be surprising if there were a few giggles at the back as Casey Ryan, Reed Smith’s global head of legal personnel, informed them that the programme’s “initial training, entitled ‘A Stress Resilience Toolkit: Moving from Surviving to Thriving,’ is scheduled for February 13 and 14”.

That Valentine’s Day treat will be spread by videoconference across the firm’s offices “around the globe”. Clearly, there is no stopping wellness.
Spanish tax returns don’t lie
Readers who are fans of Shakira, the Colombian pop star, of whom there are undoubtedly many, will be having some restless moments as she faces claims from Spain’s taxman that she owes a fair few euros. Indeed, potentially several million.

But the 40-year-old star of Zootopia has a white knight in the City of London. Miles Dean, the founder and solicitor managing partner of Milestone, a tax law consultancy, rushed to say yesterday that it was “unfortunate” that the word “evasion” was attached to her alleged behaviour.

“It unfairly ascribes a degree of criminality to the individual,” Dean said. “Shakira may well simply have been badly advised or, more likely, the Spanish authorities are continuing in their witch hunt of the rich and famous, launching criminal proceedings in an attempt to make examples of them.”

But before we assume that front row tickets to Shakira’s next London gig are in the post, Dean points out that those evil Spanish authorities might just have a point in law. “Shakira could in theory have spent less than 183 days of the Spanish tax year in the country, but if her home, partner and other interests were in Spain then she could be caught out,” he said.

If the popstress does have to cough up, she can blame another global superstar, Dean says, pointing a finger at David Beckham. Shakira registered as a tax resident in Spain in 2015, the same year in which the “Beckham law” was reinstated to mean that all employment income, foreign or domestic, is taxed as a Spanish source income, while other non-Spanish source income continues to fall outside the scope of Spanish taxation.
In the House
Data security is general counsel’s biggest headache
Data security is the most important issue for corporate legal and compliance chiefs, a survey published yesterday found.

Nearly two thirds told researchers that hacking and other technology risks topped their agendas, with a third saying they would pay a “premium price” for the highest possible data security measure around e-disclosure and other technological functions.

It emerged this week that hundreds of thousands of passwords purportedly for staff at the most prominent City of London law firms were available on the dark web.

Investigators found more than 1.1 million email addresses for lawyers for sale or freely available on sites frequented by hackers. In 800,000 cases they were listed with passwords, with details for lawyers at all five “magic circle” firms among the cache.

The in-house survey, conducted by the AlixPartners consultancy, spoke to 239 corporate general counsel and senior compliance executives from companies in the US, UK and continental Europe.

Researchers found that litigation costs continued to concern corporate legal bosses. Nearly a third said that expenditure on disputes had risen over the past year, with over a fifth of general counsel saying that they had boosted the headcount in their in-house litigation departments.

Cross-border disputes formed a significant growth area: more than 90 per cent of respondents said that the number of disputes increased or stayed the same in the 12 months preceding the survey.
Trademark infringement attempts rocket
Three-quarters of British brand holders had to battle with attempted infringement last year, a report has revealed.

The research, which covered brand-holders in the US, France and Germany as well as the UK, found that 40 per cent said attempted infringement had increased significantly over the past two years.

About 40 per cent of respondents said that they had experienced up to ten instances of attempted brand infringement over that time, while 22 per cent had experienced 11 to 30 attempts and 11 per cent reported that they had experienced more than 31 instances of infringements.

French and German businesses claimed to have suffered most infringement attempts, with the 50 per cent in France reporting increased incidents over the last two years along with 44 per cent of those in Germany.

Asked about the impact of brand infringement, respondents ranked customer confusion as the most serious problem, followed by a loss of revenue.

“Brands will have to work harder than ever to combat infringement and mitigate the risks associated with it,” said Jeff Roy, the president of CompuMark, the Boston-based consultancy that commissioned the report.
Closing Statement
Not so wise judicial words
It is good that at long last the 1976 conviction of Stephen Simmons for stealing mail bags has been quashed (writes James Morton).

Lord Burnett of Maldon, the lord chief justice, described it as an “exceptional case”, but one wonders how many others from the 1970s — and indeed later — wrongly foundered on an unsympathetic appeal court.

After all it was the then lord chief justice, Lord Lane, hearing an appeal by the Birmingham Six in 1987, who said: “The longer this case has gone on, the more convinced this court has become that the verdict of the jury [at Lancaster crown court in 1975] was correct.”

And then there was the so-called “people’s judge”, Lord Denning, who commented on the Birmingham Six during his time as Master of the Rolls: “If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous …That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, ‘It cannot be right that these actions should go any further’”.

Senior judges do not always get it right.

James Morton is a former criminal law solicitor and now author

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