Alan Fowler reviews recent cases on missing beneficiaries, pension loss, changes to schemes, the distribution of lump sum death benefits and death in service arrangements
Gregory Jones and Ned Westaway discuss cases involving conservation areas, listed buildings, environmental impact assessment, the interpretation of planning permission and procedural unfairness as a ground of planning appeal
Practitioners dealing with boundary disputes should attempt to settle such disagreements amicably to avoid incurring unnecessary legal costs, says Duncan Kynoch
The current market continues to keep commercial solicitors busy, and the introduction of the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme will present a whole new set of challenges, say Victoria Edwards and Janet Matthews
Many buyers have become unable to obtain funding for off-plan purchases that were agreed in better economic times, but there are several options open to purchasers and developers seeking to mitigate the problems this can raise, say Charles Joseph and Tim Polli
Richmond in North Yorkshire was an oasis of calm in an otherwise full-speed month. A lawyer friend with whom I trained (now a PFI partner in a large national firm) celebrated her 40th birthday with a girls' weekend away. We stayed in funky modern log cabins, indulged in beauty treatments and walks in the crisp fresh air and ate at a gastro pub in a nearby village as the main event. Our accommodation came with an organic food and drink hamper stuffed with goodies such as fresh bread and crumbling Wensleydale, not to mention the rather delicious organic wines which are meant to give you less of a hangover if seriously indulged in because of their lack of preservatives. Maybe it's an urban myth started by organic wine producers – but we had four bottles between eight of us anyway, so I doubt that qualifies as sufficient consumption to test the theory.
Mixed practices that have kept private client work, once seen as unfashionable, at the core of their strategy, have proved that this can be a wise long-term investment and a resilient model. Jean-Yves Gilg reports
