The Keeper of the Books Most sole-proprietor lawyers faced with the recent amendments to the Solicitor’s Accounts Rules have opted to hire book-keepers in lieu of getting another signatory to sign cheques of over $5,000 from their client’s account. In LOTR’s lingo, these ‘keepers of the books’ will now have the responsibility of ensuring law firms client’s accounts are balanced each month.

 

Distressing News?  The latest development in a claim for damages for distress is the decision of Mr Justice Neuberger (as he then was) in Hamilton Jones v David & Snape (2004) The Times, 15 January. His Honour held that part of the solicitors’ retainer in a children case was to protect the peace of mind of the mother by preventing the removal of her children from the country. The solicitors had failed to renew the notification of the residence order and a prohibited step order to the Passport Agency and the father was thus able to add the children to his passport and remove them. Applying Watts v Morrow [1991] 1 WLR 1421 and Farley v Skinner [2002] 2 AC 732, damages for distress were awarded in the sum of £2,000.

 

Cleaning Up After  The unhappiness of English barristers with the rate of fees for legal aid work continues to make news in the United Kingdom. Whilst the Department of Constitutional Affairs says that the Legal Aid pot is not without a bottom, the Bar Council spokesman warns: ‘The rates that are offered for the work — bearing in mind these are the most serious crimes being prosecuted and defended — are too low. For most the rates will be £20 an hour and I pay my cleaner £12 an hour.’ And whoever said a criminal lawyer’s job was to clean up after his client!

 

Cutting Through Red Tape The unhappiness of English barristers with legal aid work continues to make news in the United Kingdom. One recent grouse apart from the dollars and cents or lack thereof, has been with the way they will get it. Until now barristers were paid according to how long a job took, but now they will be paid for doing a specified bit of work, which will take away their discretion ‘to read documents or listen to tapes without going back to a bureaucrat to say they think it’s important’. Andrew Hall QC, head of the Bar Council’s remuneration committee, says that during a two-month murder trial held during a pilot scheme he had to ask for permission to prepare on a daily basis. ‘It’s a bit like a surgeon who’s in the middle of operating having to ring up a bureaucrat saying “this patient is haemorrhaging to death, can I put in two more stitches”, and not being able to do it until he gets more permission.’