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The Times
Friday May 4 2018
The Brief
Frances Gibb Jonathan Ames
By Frances Gibb and Jonathan Ames
It’s Friday … and there’s a bank holiday on the horizon.

One lawyer will be planning to have a very long weekend. Ian Rosenblatt should be in line for a cash windfall in the millions when the firm he founded nearly 30 years ago floats on the London stock exchange.

The niche litigation practice aims to raise more than £40 million in its initial public offering as it becomes the fourth legal services business to float on the London market.

We’ve no doubt, however, that even if Rosenblatt heads for the tropics amid a constant flow of piña coladas, he’ll carrying on reading The Brief. And here it is -- this morning’s must-read of all things legal, including news, comment and gossip. For more in-depth coverage ...
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Today
SIX FOLD LEAP IN DISCLOSURE FAILURES
Judges trained to cope with stress of abuse cases
Steep rise in whistleblower claims against individual directors
Lawyers predict ‘huge’ legal bill for breast screening error
Brexit withdrawal deal could be ‘unenforceable’, warn peers
Rosenblatt aims to raise £43m in stock market listing
Blue Bag diary: On brands and how law firms became cattle
The Churn: Simmons & Simmons poaches two in Dublin
Comment: Blair sowed seeds for crisis in justice system
Comment: Avoiding a race to the bottom in legal services
Tweet us @timeslaw with your views.
 
Story of the Day
Six fold leap in disclosure failures
The number of sexual offence cases that have been dropped because of a failure by police or prosecutors to disclose evidence has risen six fold in four years (writes Richard Ford). Official figures show a steady year-on-year increase in sex crime prosecutions being abandoned over issues around the disclosure of evidence.
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News round-up
Judges trained to cope with stress of online abuse
Judges and magistrates are being trained to handle stress because of the “intolerable pressure” of abuse on social media and the rise of disturbing sex and child abuse cases in the courts. The groundbreaking online course has been produced by the Judicial College, the training body for judges, with the aim of helping judges learn to cope with stress and build resilience. It is being offered to all judges and magistrates in England and Wales and covers the signs and causes of stress and a clinical assessment.
Read the full story >
Whistleblower claims rise after tribunal puts employees in the frame
Whistleblowing claims against directors have hit a four-year high since a tribunal found that individuals could be targeted, according to research. Lawyers said that the ruling in [ital] International Petroleum Ltd and Others v Osipov, which was heard in the Employment Appeal Tribunal last year, had created a flood of claims but employers were “failing to take steps to protect themselves”.
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NHS faces huge legal fight after breast cancer error, lawyers say
Health ministers face a huge legal fight after it emerged that hundreds of lives were cut short by a breast cancer screening error affecting 450,000 women, lawyers predicted. Up to 270 women are thought to have had their lives shortened by the technology glitch, but experts calculated that 800 would also have been spared pointless surgery.
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Brexit deal could be unenforceable, peers warn
Britain’s EU withdrawal agreement could be unenforceable unless an UK-EU dispute resolution is established, peers warned yesterday. Theresa May has made clear that withdrawal from the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) is one of her “red lines” for Brexit. However, the deadlock on what will replace the court during the Brexit process could leave individuals and business unprotected, the Lords EU justice sub-committee said.
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Rosenblatt aims to raise £43m in stock market listing
Rosenblatt, the City of London niche litigation law firm, is hoping to raise at least £43 million when becomes the fourth law firm to float on the London Stock Exchange next week. The firm announced last month [april] that it would launch on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) on May 8. The initial public offering is likely to result in a personal windfall for Ian Rosenblatt, 58, who founded the firm in 1989.
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In Brief
  • Lockerbie bomber evidence to be reviewed for possible appeal -- The Times
  • Linklaters asks lawyers to disclose romantic relationships -- Legal Cheek
  • Rudy Giuliani vs. the Law -- The New York Times
Comment
Blair sowed seeds for crisis in our justice system
Labour’s hasty reforms of the lord chancellor role are now having a chilling effect on the rule of law, writes Khawar Qureshi, QC

Recent comments from the senior bench suggest that a concordat reached in 2004 that was meant to assuage the concerns of the judiciary, require the lord chancellor to defend the judges and ensure effective allocation of resources for access to justice -- has failed.
Read the full story >
Twitter
Tweet of the day
Jury sent home today; crown were due to open case. The reason I hear you ask? The roof fell in, obviously. Duh! #TheLawIsBroken #SnaresbrookCC what other profession would put up with this? Annex robing room a ruin. @BarristerSecret
@RugbyBarrister
Comment
Avoiding a race to the bottom in legal services
Lawyers shouldn't sacrifice quality while chasing customers in a crowded market, Sheila Kumar writes

Transparency is a word that lawyers are hearing a lot, thanks to the Competition and Markets Authority. Lawyers should be free to run their businesses how they see fit. Equally, regulators act in the public interest first and foremost. There is a balance to be found, and the end result must be a legal market where consumers can easily find and choose the right lawyer for them.
Read the full story >
Blue Bag
On brands and how law firms became cattle
Remember the days when the word “brand” conjured images of weather-beaten cowboys scorching the flesh of newly born calves with the squiggly initials of their ranch name? Nor do we really, but we can recall growing up in an era when the telly was replete with Hollywood westerns of a wet Saturday afternoon.

The definition of the word moved on, of course, to refer to global products such as fizzy drinks and handbags. Now it is even applied to legal practices, which not so long ago were simply known by a list of the partners’ names.

In the modern law firm world, branding is important. Not least to an outfit called Acritas, a transatlantic consultancy that expends a lot of energy purporting to establish which law firm brand is king.

On Wednesday Acritas published its league table of what it claims to be the most powerful law firm brands in the UK. It was a very close run competition, with the shocking result that the top ten firms “are separated by the fewest number of points in the index’s history”.

To put you out of your misery, the winner was the City of London firm Pinsent Masons, which just edged Eversheds Sutherland, the Anglo-US outfit that resulted from a merger last year.

Rounding out the top ten was another transatlantic firm, DLA Piper, followed by CMS, Linklaters — the highest placed of the City’s “magic circle” elite — Slaughter and May, Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy, Herbert Smith Freehills and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

Just how Acritas arrives at what seems to be a completely arbitrary list is rather a mystery. The researchers based the assessment on interviews with more than 2,000 corporate clients, asking for their views on five core areas: top of mind awareness, favourability, consideration for top-level litigation, consideration for major mergers and acquisition work, and which firms were most used overall.

Life was a lot less complicated when cowboys branded little calves.
Lawyers want to be flexible
The availability of flexible working hours is the most desired work benefit in the legal profession, a recruitment specialist reported yesterday.

Seventeen per cent of the 3,000-odd lawyers surveyed cited “flexi-time” as their top perk. In second place was an arrangement that allowed employees to have more than the statutory minimum number of holidays. Surprisingly, eligibility for a financial bonus was only the third most desirable perk among those in the legal profession.

The researchers found that many were getting their top wish as flexi-time is now part of employment packages for 25 per cent of those working in the legal profession. That figure has risen by 5 per cent since 2016. Pension contributions and private medical and dental cover were also frequently cited perks.

“We are seeing benefits packages within the legal industry becoming more comprehensive and competitive,” Kathryn Riley, managing director of the consultancy Douglas Scott, said.

“In recent years we’ve seen increases across most components including pension contributions and private medical and dental cover, as well as financial bonuses. Firms are more focused that ever on rewarding talent, which is reflected in the survey findings.”
The Churn
Simmons & Simmons poaches two in Dublin
After a May Day flurry of City law firm partnership announcements, we now move on to a spurt of activity in the transfer market.

Simmons & Simmons, the law firm that contributed to fears that Square Mile practices would decamp en masse to Dublin after Brexit, has raided one of Ireland’s top firms for two partners. Elaine Keane and Niamh Ryan, who join from A&L Goodbody, officially opened the doors on their new firm’s Dublin office yesterday. In a statement, the firm said that it expected to have ten partners and 40 staff in Dublin within three years.

Back on the English side of the Iris Sea, Sarah Pearce, a cybersecurity specialist, jumps from one US firm in the Square Mile to another as she joins the partnership of Paul Hastings from Cooley.

Another American firm in London, Latham & Watkins, has poached the “magic circle” firm Linklaters’ Asia chief Carl Fernandes. According to The Lawyer website, Fernandes joins Latham as a partner after spending 11 years at Links.

There has also been a spot of magic circle jousting in Paris with Frédéric Chevallier, a patent litigation specialist, having jumped from the local office of Allen & Overy to the French partnership of the Anglo-Australian firm Herbert Smith Freehills.

Hopscotching back to Blighty, the national law firm Irwin Mitchell has poached Katie McCann, a family lawyer, from the Manchester law firm Kuits. And Jonathan Sawtell-Gist, a wills and trusts disputes lawyer, has joined the partnership from BPE Solicitors in Cheltenham.

Finally, to two senior management appointments: Andrew Woods takes over as managing director at the regional firm Spratt Endicott Solicitors, and Martin Hulls slots into the managing partner role at Ward Hadaway, a Newcastle-based firm.
Closing Statement
Double vision
It is good to see that spurious accident claims are now being stamped on (James Morton writes). The disc jockey Sandip Singh Atwal has landed himself a £5,000 bill and faced contempt proceedings after the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust was able to show he had been lying about the extent of his injuries, according to The Times.

It has not always been the case, but some years ago Sir Rigby Swift, sitting in the High Court, asked a claimant if she still had double vision. “Yes, sir,” she replied.

“And you can still see two versions of your leading counsel then?”

“Yes, sir, two of him.”

“Just as well, madam. One of him has already left to take a case in the next court.”

James Morton is a former criminal law solicitor and now author
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