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The best medicine

Do you ever sit across the table from a client and wonder why you are on one side of the table and they are on the other? I have this terrible anxiety that I shall come back to earth in another life and find myself as a career criminal, from a young age destined to spend much of my life behind bars or at the police station, and being spoken to through the wicket by a harassed duty solicitor or being advised by someonewearing a wing collar and funny white bands and a horse-hair wig. I worry that I will be the one bewildered at the back of numerous courts not being able to hear properly what is going on and being sent down for years at a time. I have represented people my age, and I always wonder how it was that I grew up to sit on one side of the table and my client grew up to sit on the other. It all seems to be about chance.

Four per cent of Terrorism Act arrests result in convictions

Less than four per cent of people arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 last year were actually convicted, a survey has shown.

QCs face compulsory reaccreditation under new advocacy scheme

The most experienced criminal advocates in the country will be subject to compulsory reaccreditation every five years under plans for a joint quality assurance scheme launched this week by the Bar Standards Board, the SRA and ILEX.

Firm must pay for asbestos victim's hospice care

Engineering firm Foster Wheeler must pay for the hospice care of a worker who died of mesothelioma which he contracted as a result of exposure to asbestos, the High Court has ruled.

Expect redundancies, MoJ director tells staff

About £2bn will be sliced off the Ministry of Justice's £9bn budget over the next two years, some of which through redundancies, according to a letter leaked to the Public and Commercial Services Union.

Elderly jurors don't have the foggiest, say judges

Letting the over-70s join juries would cause "substantial disruption" to proceedings, according to judges.

Society warns of judicial review over civil contracts

The Law Society is “urgently taking legal advice” on whether there are grounds for a judicial review of the LSC's latest civil legal aid tender round.

Barnardo's attacks "unprecedented delay" in care proceedings

Children's charity Barnardo's has attacked the county and family courts for “unprecedented delay” in making care and supervision orders.