Issue: Vol 159, Issue 7387

Law firm Davenport Lyons, continues to drive its growth strategy with the recruitment of Gerald Montagu, who joins as a partner in the corporate department.

Law firm Davenport Lyons, continues to drive its growth strategy with the recruitment of Gerald Montagu, who joins as a partner in the corporate department.

The Lord Chancellor, the Right Honourable Jack Straw MP, has appointed Rebecca Alexandra Howard and Katherine Jane Greening Tucker to be salaried part-time employment judges of the Employment Tribunals (England and Wales) and Brynley Lloyd and Mark Simon Emerton to be Salaried Employment Judges of the Employment Tribunals (England and Wales).

Little attention has been paid to a quiet revolution so profound that many solicitors’ firms may end up as quasi-alternative business structures. For over a decade, firms have been employing paralegals in ever greater numbers. They have also been delegating ever more complex, client-facing, work to paralegals. That fact is old news; what’s new is that we are approaching the point when paralegal fee-earners in firms may begin to outnumber solicitors—where solicitors become a minority in their own profession.

It is one thing for the courts to protect citizens from the arbitrary use of prosecutorial discretion resulting in abuse of process; quite another to require prosecutors to spell out the public interest criteria they will apply in relation to particular crimes, not least to particular instances of particular crimes. Circumstances are infinitely variable, especially when a case is hypothetical. Ms Purdy may never be assisted in suicide, by her husband or anyone else. For all we know, she may—like Mrs Pretty—end up dying a natural death in an English hospice. In short, Purdy seems unprecedented, unsound and unconstitutional.

“Bombed—lost everything”. That was how one London Citizens Advice bureau memorably recorded the nature of the legal problems for the newly dispossessed “streams” of clients approaching the nascent service. War was declared on 3 September 1939 and the first bureau opened its doors the next day.

Ian Sadler & William Childs examine the right to legal representation at disciplinary proceedings

Jacqueline Renton reports on the human rights’ approach to non-consensual marriage

Kenneth Warner considers who’s liable for the acts of subcontractors

Part 1: Nick Knapman explains the art of correcting mistakes by construction