A vital step when approaching trial

If ever the saying “time is money” were true, then it must be when you talk about lawyers. With the guideline hourly rate for a partner regularly exceeding £200 an hour, any steps which help to reduce the time spent on a case are worthwhile taking. 

Becoming a tutor with the Institute of Legal Secretaries

I started teaching shortly after I finished law school. I found the experience terrifying but exciting. Fortunately, the butterflies went away quickly but the excitement of exchanging ideas with others never did. I was aware of a hands-on training course for legal secretaries when I was teaching the National Association of Paralegals course in the late 1990s. I found that with both courses the practical approach to legal study was very refreshing. In 2005 there was an opportunity to provide training for the Institute that I was very happy to take up.

My background and legal experience

Attitude is a mind-set. It is the way you look at things mentally. When things are going well a positive attitude is easy to maintain. But we're all human and something will always happen to test our positive mind-set. So when that happens, here are the top 10 tips to help you bounce back and regain a positive outlook:

1.    Nurture your funny focus. While it's not appropriate to laugh away all serious problems, laughing can help you transfer your focus from the problem to possible solutions.

Is it career suicide to ask for a pay rise in the current economic climate?

Imagine the scene – you’ve worked with the same company for a good few years and over the last two years you’ve had nothing by way of a pay increase, not even the cost of living. With margins being squeezed from all sides how do you ask for a pay rise? When it comes to asking for a pay rise, even the most confident people can suffer a crisis of confidence.

If you work in a MS Windows environment, sooner or later you will ask your IT person the question that he or she hears at least once a day: “Why is my PC so slow? It never used to be.”

There is no short answer to this question because there are a lot of reasons why a perfectly good machine could start behaving like a calculator from 1982. Computers can be compared to cars: They need looking after and TLC. The same way that you would wash your car, keep the radiator filled with coolant, change your oil every 10,000 miles and occasionally vacuum the floor to remove debris, you should look after your computer.

Good English Matters!

Do you agree with this statement? Are you concerned, annoyed and fed up with the decline in standards in the use of our beautiful English language? If so, please read on.

The Queen’s English Society (QES) has been in existence for more than thirty-five years, but now more than ever it is important to work toward preserving the beauty and precision of the English language.

The QES believes that young and old alike have the right to enjoy the pleasure of speaking, listening to and writing good English. The QES are actively encouraging new members, in order to help preserve our wonderful language for future generations.

The tour we conduct takes Students around an area of London known as ‘The Temple’, where many barristers’ chambers are located, and the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, which contains 86 courts and 3.5 miles of corridors and houses the High Court in London and the Appeal Courts, both Civil and Criminal.

We visit part of the ‘Inner Temple’ and pass by the famous ‘Temple Church’ - yes, the very same Temple Church depicted in the Da Vinci Code!

It’s like entering a different world because, as we step through an archway from the very busy Strand into a side passage, the traffic noise suddenly disappears into deafening silence! We stop to look around us at all the beautiful buildings housing the chambers and discuss how barristers’ chambers operate.

The nine Legal Secretaries pictured below were the first to pass the Legal Secretaries Diploma course run by advocates of the GTA University Centre in association with The Institute of Legal Secretaries and PAs. The GTA worked closely with members of the local industry to deliver the course, which started in September 2007 and was tutored by Gavin Ferguson, Allan Skirrow and Philip Nicol-Gent, also pictured. Gavin is an advocate of Ozannes Advocates and Notaries Public Guernsey and practices as a trust lawyer, advising a wide range of professional trustees on all issues concerning trusts. Allan is an advocate of the Royal Court of Guernsey and currently appointed by Carey Olsen as part of their corporate group. Allan has acted on behalf of various developers and advised on many aspects of property acquisition.

In the last two issues we have looked at preparing and writing a report. The third and final stage of report writing is to check your report. Make sure you are methodical when checking, no matter how much you feel you know what you have written: start at the top of page one, and keep going until the last line of the last page!

When you have finished writing your report, run spellcheck on it, then take a printout and leave it for as long as possible (preferably a day or two) so you can read it with fresh eyes. It may be worth asking somebody else to read it as well, as they will spot mistakes not noticeable to you. See the ten points below, which are divided into three stages, for checking longer reports. For shorter reports, check everything but you will be able to check all the points at once.

Civil Litigation Procedure - Part 2

In our last article on Civil Litigation, we outlined some of the history of the current litigation rules and what should be considered before a legal claim is issued. In this article, we will consider some of the steps that a Defendant can take when responding to a claim.

Avoidance is the best policy