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03 February 2017 / Enid Rowlands
Issue: 7732 / Categories: Features , Brexit , EU , Profession
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Exiting the EU: an update for lawyers

Brexit & other horizon scanning, by Enid Rowlands

  • Potential impact on cohort of European lawyers practising here in the UK.

  • Working through changes to the single market for legal services.

It has been more than seven months since the country voted to leave the EU, but Brexit continues to dominate the news agenda, with Parliament debating the Article 50 Bill this week.

At the end of last year, we submitted our views on the matter to the Justice Select Committee, which had asked for comments on the implications of the referendum result for the legal services market.

We outlined what we believe is needed for the legal market to support the economy post-Brexit. The importance of the legal services sector to the UK economy as a whole is well known. According to TheCityUK, 2014-15 was the fifth successive year of growth for UK-based legal services firms. The sector’s trade surplus has nearly doubled over the past decade, and its contribution to the economy increased to a record £25.7bn.

Opportunities

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Thackray Williams—Lucy Zhu

Thackray Williams—Lucy Zhu

Dual-qualified partner joins as head of commercial property department

Morgan Lewis—David A. McManus

Morgan Lewis—David A. McManus

Firm announces appointment of next chair

Burges Salmon—Rebecca Wilsker

Burges Salmon—Rebecca Wilsker

Director joins corporate team from the US

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When it comes to free legal advice, demand massively outweighs supply. 'Millions of people are excluded from access to justice as they don’t have anywhere to turn for free advice—or don’t know that they can ask for help,' Bhavini Bhatt, development director at the Access to Justice Foundation, writes in this week's NLJ
When an ex-couple is deciding who gets what in the divorce or civil partnership dissolution, when is it appropriate for a third party to intervene? David Burrows, NLJ columnist and solicitor advocate, considers this thorny issue in this week’s NLJ
NLJ's latest Charities Appeals Supplement has been published in this week’s issue
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