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12 May 2017
Issue: 7745 / Categories: Features
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Book review: Personal Injury Small Claims, Portals & Fixed Costs

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“Those who own legal practices would do well to read the book and then have a long look at where they are going”

Author: Kerry Underwood
Publisher: Law Abroad Publishers
ISBN: 9780993534935
Price: £80

Where to begin? Kerry on Personal Injury Small Claims, Portals and Fixed Costs is not, even for the anoraked cognoscenti, a sexy title.

Standout features

The first remarkable feature of this work (of which there are three volumes) is that it will educate those who never encounter any of the topics named. The explanation of distance selling law is achingly clear and topped up with practical guidance too. This is ever more important as firms seek work far from their geographical base. The London Evening Standard regularly carries advertisements placed by a practice in Birkenhead. I regularly refer London conveyancing work to a firm in Gillingham, Dorset. Get it wrong and you forfeit the right to be paid. That alone warrants the reasonable cost of this set of works (£80?).

One might think that

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Recent allegations surrounding Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor have reignited scrutiny of the ancient common law offence of misconduct in public office. Writing in NLJ this week, Simon Parsons, teaching fellow at Bath Spa University, asks whether their conduct could clear a notoriously high legal hurdle
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A Court of Appeal ruling has drawn a firm line under party autonomy in arbitration. Writing in NLJ this week, Masood Ahmed, associate professor at the University of Leicester, analyses Gluck v Endzweig [2026] EWCA Civ 145, where a clause allowing arbitrators to amend an award ‘at any time’ was held incompatible with the Arbitration Act 1996
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