Features

Ray Purdy discusses how a new space detective agency can offer lawyers access to evidence from satellites & drones.  

Have you ever wished you could go back in time and see what was going on at a certain place at a particular time? 

The Criminal Bar is no country for young people.  

In the unlikely event that anyone else ever wished to chronicle my headship of Gutteridge Chambers, it might be noticed during my time that almost all the old truths of life in Chambers had been turned on their heads. 

Job title 

Barrister and Partner, Kobre & Kim LLP 

Kobre & Kim LLP is an international litigation boutique with offices in New York, London, Hong Kong, Washington DC, Miami, Cayman Islands, and British Virgin Islands. 

David Wurtzel reviews Anna Weiss by Mike Cullen at London E14’s My Space.  

By coincidence, on my way to see AnnaWeiss, Mike Cullen’s 1997 play about a teenager who accuses her father of sexual abuse based on her memory of it as recovered through hypnotherapy, I was reading a recent Court of Appeal decision about a trial in which a teenager accused her father of sexual abuse and the defence was that the complainant’s mental illness and therapy had led her to “remember” that she must have been abused when in fact she had not. 

Going it alone: for the barrister with a book inside them, author Mark McCrum offers a guide to self-publishing.  

I’ve written nine books under my own name, seven under other people’s – all traditionally published. So why did I decide to go it alone and publish my novel Fest myself? 

A new way of calculating the Practising Certificate Fee according to ability to pay is to be introduced. Stephen Crowne, Chief Executive of the Bar Council, explains.  

Addressing a crowd in Worcester, Massachusetts, in autumn 1936, US President Franklin Roosevelt declared: “Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay”. At a time when the legal services market is tough and unforgiving, these words will assuredly resonate beyond those members of the Bar familiar with American history. 

David Wurtzel meets Sir Michael Pitt, the successor to David Edmonds as Chairman of the Legal Services Board, and reports back to Counsel on a man the Bar can talk to.  

Sir Michael Pitt is such a courteous and welcoming interviewee, it seemed churlish to mention the hostility which many at the Bar feel towards the Legal Services Board, of which he has been Chairman since 1 May. From client letters to QASA, barristers like to say that they are “over-regulated”. 

Celebrating excellence  

Key Facts 

Date: Saturday 8 November 2014 

Time: 08:00–18:00 

Cost: Prices start from £125 

CPD: Up to 5 points 

Venue: Westminster Park Plaza, 

200 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7UT 

Do the Inns of Court need to change to stay relevant and can they meet the needs of the next generation of barristers? In an article based upon his recent speech to Middle Temple, Lord Judge refl ects upon their future.  

My thesis this evening comes from Di Lampedusa: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” 

Mark Hatcher examines the recent by-elections and the resulting fall-out for the political parties.  

The next general election is barely 200 days away but in the past few weeks, the village of Westminster has been in the grip of by-election fever.