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24 January 2014 / Charles Brasted
Issue: 7591 / Categories: Features
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Smart casual

foxlow

Charles Brasted dresses down for a visit to Foxlow

“Casual” is not a lawyers’ word. When consultees highlight the “casual deployment of anecdote...as evidence” in purported justification of the government’s latest proposals for reform of judicial review—reforms, incidentally, that avowedly seek to restrict access to judicial oversight of the same Government's actions—it is not meant as a mark of approbation. Casual is the opposite of deliberate, careful, prepared. And the carefully-pressed chinos of the now seemingly ubiquitous dress-down Fridays of City law firms are, of course, the antithesis of casual—more care and planning has to go into the faux relaxed look of the Friday lawyer than into any number of chalk-striped suits from Ede and Ravenscroft.

So, when we booked in to the newly-opened Foxlow on St John Street in Clerkenwell and were told somewhat firmly that the dress code was casual, we had second thoughts. Not just because we did not have the time to plan suitable outfits. The penchant for informal so often translates into slapdash service, hard surfaces, noisy rooms and

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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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