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18 August 2015 / Roger Smith
Categories: Opinion
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A change of scene

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Roger Smith provides some home thoughts from abroad

Nova Scotia is about the size of Wales with less than a third of the population. On the last evening of my visit to its capital, Halifax, the Queen Mary 2 took a twirl in its deep water harbour at sunset. The ship dominated the city—providing a good image of the relative size of Nova Scotia as compared with the UK. So, you might think that the Home Countries could learn little from a sleepy eastern Canadian province on the edge of the Atlantic. You would, however, be wrong. It turns out that Nova Scotia has a number of lessons for us—at least in legal aid.

Organisation

Two Province-wide organisations dominate legal assistance in Nova Scotia. One is the Nova Scotia Legal Aid Commission (styling itself as Legal Aid Nova Scotia), the equivalent of our onetime Legal Services Commission. The other, smaller provider, is the Legal Information Society of Nova Scotia (LISNS). This is oriented towards public information. The province has an American-style prohibition on the “unauthorised

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

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Sponsored by
Arc Pensions Law—Matthew Swynnerton

Arc Pensions Law—Matthew Swynnerton

Chair of the Association of Pension Lawyers joins as partner

Ampa Group—Kamal Chauhan

Ampa Group—Kamal Chauhan

Group names Shakespeare Martineau partner head of Sheffield office

Blake Morgan—four promotions

Blake Morgan—four promotions

Four legal directors promoted to partner across UK offices

NEWS
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The abolition of assured shorthold tenancies and section 21 evictions marks the beginning of a ‘brave new world’ for England’s rental sector, writes Daniel Bacon of Seddons GSC

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Stephen Gold’s latest Civil Way column rounds up a flurry of procedural and regulatory changes reshaping housing, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and personal injury litigation
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Patients are being systematically failed by an NHS complaints regime that is opaque, poorly enforced and often stacked against them, argues Charles Davey of The Barrister Group
NLJ this week: Prenups meet a jurisdictional brick wall
A wealthy Russian divorce battle has produced a sharp warning about trying to challenge foreign nuptial agreements in the wrong English court. Writing in NLJ this week, Vanessa Friend and Robert Jackson of Hodge Jones & Allen examine Timokhin v Timokhina, where the High Court enforced Russian judgments arising from a prenuptial agreement despite arguments based on the landmark Radmacher decision
NLJ this week: Has Rylands v Fletcher come back from the dead?
An obscure Victorian tort may be heading for an unexpected revival after a significant Privy Council ruling that could reshape liability for dangerous escapes, according to Richard Buckley, barrister and emeritus professor of law at the University of Reading
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