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NLJ this week: Dogs, dates & debt-chasers

13 June 2025
Issue: 8120 / Categories: Legal News , Procedure & practice , Civil way , Artificial intelligence , Family
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Deadlines are crucial, but how is the date and time determined? In this week’s NLJ, former district judge Stephen Gold explores a recent case in which solicitors made ‘an innocent day-counting mistake’. Gold notes that the case also sheds light on the need for ‘promptness’

He shares advice for ‘any practitioner arguing for or against the appointment of an intermediary for a vulnerable witness in family’, and urges them to study a particular Court of Appeal case. He remarks on ‘an essential case’ in the small claims track, involving an invention for canines, and also covers Garfield, an artificial intelligence (AI) debt-chasing lawyer now authorised by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. 

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Carey Olsen—Kim Paiva

Carey Olsen—Kim Paiva

Group partner joins Guernsey banking and finance practice

Morgan Lewis—Kat Gibson

Morgan Lewis—Kat Gibson

London labour and employment team announces partner hire

Foot Anstey McKees—Chris Milligan & Michael Kelly

Foot Anstey McKees—Chris Milligan & Michael Kelly

Double partner appointment marks Belfast expansion

NEWS
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has not done enough to protect the future sustainability of the legal aid market, MPs have warned
Writing in NLJ this week, NLJ columnist Dominic Regan surveys a landscape marked by leapfrog appeals, costs skirmishes and notable retirements. With an appeal in Mazur due to be heard next month, Regan notes that uncertainties remain over who will intervene, and hopes for the involvement of the Lady Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls in deciding the all-important outcome
After the Southport murders and the misinformation that followed, contempt of court law has come under intense scrutiny. In this week's NLJ, Lawrence McNamara and Lauren Schaefer of the Law Commission unpack proposals aimed at restoring clarity without sacrificing fair trial rights
The latest Home Office figures confirm that stop and search remains both controversial and diminished. Writing in NLJ this week, Neil Parpworth of De Montfort University analyses data showing historically low use of s 1 PACE powers, with drugs searches dominating what remains
Boris Johnson’s 2019 attempt to shut down Parliament remains a constitutional cautionary tale. The move, framed as a routine exercise of the royal prerogative, was in truth an extraordinary effort to sideline Parliament at the height of the Brexit crisis. Writing in NLJ this week, Professor Graham Zellick KC dissects how prorogation was wrongly assumed to be beyond judicial scrutiny, only for the Supreme Court to intervene unanimously
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