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18 October 2024 / Jo Sanders
Issue: 8090 / Categories: Features , Profession , Career focus , Media
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One-stop shop for panicking clients

Jo Sanders on how to keep a cool head in an emergency
  • Looks at the rise of multi-disciplinary teams in crisis management.

What is a crisis? Would you recognise one if you were in it and what type of legal help would you seek? It’s worth considering a few examples: a team member in IT is told that a laptop has been left on a train. An employee calls a whistleblowing hotline to disclose that she has been bullied. The CEO has been charged with drink-driving. Accounts discover that a £10,000 payment has not been received. A school calls a parent to say that a child has been involved in unsuitable messaging. A journalist emails with a warning of an imminent adverse article.

These may seem to be entirely different scenarios, but they all have some important common elements. We describe a crisis as an unplanned, unpredictable situation which has the power to impact you or your business’s performance and reputation in a severe way, as well as

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Keystone Law—Milena Szuniewicz-Wenzel & Ian Hopkinson

Keystone Law—Milena Szuniewicz-Wenzel & Ian Hopkinson

International arbitration team strengthened by double partner hire

Coodes Solicitors—Pam Johns, Rachel Pearce & Bradley Kaine

Coodes Solicitors—Pam Johns, Rachel Pearce & Bradley Kaine

Firm celebrates trio holding senior regional law society and junior lawyers division roles

Michelman Robinson—Sukhi Kaler

Michelman Robinson—Sukhi Kaler

Partner joins commercial and business litigation team in London

NEWS
The Legal Action Group (LAG)—the UK charity dedicated to advancing access to justice—has unveiled its calendar of training courses, seminars and conferences designed to support lawyers, advisers and other legal professionals in tackling key areas of public interest law
Refusing ADR is risky—but not always fatal. Writing in NLJ this week, Masood Ahmed and Sanjay Dave Singh of the University of Leicester analyse Assensus Ltd v Wirsol Energy Ltd: despite repeated invitations to mediate, the defendant stood firm, made a £100,000 Part 36 offer and was ultimately ‘wholly vindicated’ at trial
As the drip-feed of Epstein disclosures fuels ‘collateral damage’, the rush to cry misconduct in public office may be premature. Writing in NLJ this week, David Locke of Hill Dickinson warns that the offence is no catch-all for political embarrassment. It demands a ‘grave departure’ from proper standards, an ‘abuse of the public’s trust’ and conduct ‘sufficiently serious to warrant criminal punishment’
Employment law is shifting at the margins. In his latest Employment Law Brief for NLJ this week, Ian Smith of Norwich Law School examines a Court of Appeal ruling confirming that volunteers are not a special legal species and may qualify as ‘workers’
Criminal juries may be convicting—or acquitting—on a misunderstanding. Writing in NLJ this week Paul McKeown, Adrian Keane and Sally Stares of The City Law School and LSE report troubling survey findings on the meaning of ‘sure’
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