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All eyes on opticians

12 March 2009
Issue: 7360 / Categories: Legal News , Legal services , Profession
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Legal Services

Lawyers should look to the example of opticians when implementing the new business models, Jack Straw has said.
Just as optician chains provide a more varied and inexpensive range of spectacles, bigger law firms can offer quality legal services at lower cost, he told an audience at London School of Economics last week.

The new business models for law firms would see greater use of paralegals and legal executive lawyers, and fewer corner office firms, he predicted.
Highlighting the fact half of legal aid in the Crown Court is consumed by just one per cent of cases, he called for a “better balance in legal aid” in England and Wales.

Straw, the secretary of state for justice, quoted former US President Jimmy Carter’s words that “we are in danger of becoming ‘over-lawyered and under-represented’”.

He said England and Wales had 400 lawyers to every person. It also has the best funded legal aid system in the world—£38 per head of population, as compared to £31 per head in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and about £10 per head in New Zealand and Canada.

Lawyers and law firms who are dependent on state funding “would be wise to reconsider expectations of earnings”, he warned.

Issue: 7360 / Categories: Legal News , Legal services , Profession
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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Russell-Cooke—Susanna Heley

Russell-Cooke—Susanna Heley

Legal director appointment bolsters public and regulatory team

Slater Heelis—five appointments

Slater Heelis—five appointments

Firm appoints training partner and four new trainees

Bolt Burdon Kemp—Natasha Orr

Bolt Burdon Kemp—Natasha Orr

Firm strengthens military claims team with senior associate hire

NEWS
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Judgments are ‘worthless without enforcement’, says HHJ Karen Walden-Smith, senior circuit judge and chair of the Civil Justice Council’s enforcement working group. In this week's NLJ, she breaks down the CJC’s April 2025 report, which identified systemic flaws and proposed 39 reforms, from modernising procedures to protecting vulnerable debtors
Writing in NLJ this week, Katherine Harding and Charlotte Finley of Penningtons Manches Cooper examine Standish v Standish [2025] UKSC 26, the Supreme Court ruling that narrowed what counts as matrimonial property, and its potential impact upon claims under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975
In this week's NLJ, Dr Jon Robins, editor of The Justice Gap and lecturer at Brighton University, reports on a campaign to posthumously exonerate Christine Keeler. 60 years after her perjury conviction, Keeler’s son Seymour Platt has petitioned the king to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy, arguing she was a victim of violence and moral hypocrisy, not deceit. Supported by Felicity Gerry KC, the dossier brands the conviction 'the ultimate in slut-shaming'
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