NewsBites - June 2013
Daydream believers
Lawyers are the third most likely profession to daydream, according to a recent poll of 2,000 British workers by Travelodge.
On average, lawyers daydream four times during their working day, with each daydream lasting on average four minutes and two seconds. Eight in ten lawyers said daydreaming helped improve motivation and performance. More than half (56%) said they used it as a technique to visualise success; 29% said they daydreamed to help work through problems; and 23% reported that daydreaming helped clear their mind at work.
DPP to step down
Keir Starmer QC has announced that he will step down from his role as Director of Public Prosecutions at the end of his five-year term of office, in October this year. It had been a “huge privilege”, Starmer said, to have led the CPS for the past four and half years. The human rights lawyer, appointed DPP in 2008, was praised by Attorney General Dominic Grieve QC MP for bringing “humanity” to his role.
Defamation costs
A Civil Justice Council Working Group has published its report on options for controlling costs in defamation and privacy proceedings. Set up in response to a request by Justice Minister Lord McNally to explore the issue ahead of the Defamation Bill measures, the group called for greater specialist judicial case management; a system of ‘variable costs protection’; agreement in which circumstances parties might lose their cost protection; costs budgeting measures; and continuation of courts’ cost capping powers.
