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06 November 2020
Issue: 7909 / Categories: Legal News , Profession , Procedure & practice
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NLJ this week: Personal service: time for review?

Twenty Essex barristers explore recent developments in the law on service―the means by which legal proceedings are commenced―and conclude that it’s time for a ‘wholescale review’, in this week’s NLJ

Paul Lowenstein QC and Andrew Dinsmore focus on the law on personal service within the jurisdiction. The courts have looked at many different scenarios, including digital service, service by alternative means in multi-defendant litigation and a case where the claimant’s agent tried to physically serve the claim form but was prevented by the defendant’s security team (the papers were left by the defendant’s car before the defendant was driven off in it).

Lowenstein and Dismore suggest that the law on service is one of the areas that would benefit from a Law Commission review, and ‘especially so given that the transition period for the UK’s exit from the EU is fast-approaching, at which time the UK will have to consider its treaty obligations in relation to service’.

They suggest some starting points for the Law Commission to study.

@TwentyEssex


MOVERS & SHAKERS

Carey Olsen—Patrick Ormond

Carey Olsen—Patrick Ormond

Partner joinscorporate and finance practice in British Virgin Islands

Dawson Cornwell—Naomi Angell

Dawson Cornwell—Naomi Angell

Firm strengthens children department with adoption and surrogacy expert

Penningtons Manches Cooper—Graham Green

Penningtons Manches Cooper—Graham Green

Media and technology expert joins employment team as partner in Cambridge

NEWS
Freezing orders in divorce proceedings can unexpectedly ensnare third parties and disrupt businesses. In NLJ this week, Lucy James of Trowers & Hamlins explains how these orders—dubbed a ‘nuclear weapon’—preserve assets but can extend far beyond spouses to companies and business partners 
A Court of Appeal ruling has clarified that ‘rent’ must be monetary—excluding tenants paid in labour from statutory protection. In this week's NLJ, James Naylor explains Garraway v Phillips, where a tenant worked two days a week instead of paying rent
Thousands more magistrates are to be recruited, under a major shake-up to speed up and expand the hiring process
Three men wrongly imprisoned for a combined 77 years have been released—yet received ‘not a penny’ in compensation, exposing deep flaws in the justice system. Writing in NLJ this week, Dr Jon Robins reports on Justin Plummer, Oliver Campbell and Peter Sullivan, whose convictions collapsed amid discredited forensics, ‘oppressive’ police interviews and unreliable ‘cell confessions’
A quiet month for employment cases still delivers key legal clarifications. In his latest Employment Law Brief for NLJ, Ian Smith reports that whistleblowing protection remains intact even where disclosures are partly self-serving, provided the worker reasonably believes they serve the ‘public interest’ 
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