Features

Name: Julie Cave
Position: Managing Director
Company: Credit Management (Law) Ltd 

Lord Justice Sedley reviews three books on the topic of international law and piracy.  

Among the casualties of warfare during the last hundred years have been many of the rules governing the conduct of hostilities. The Hague and Geneva Conventions describe the members of warring States’ armies and militias as “lawful combatants”. The reason they contain no category of “unlawful combatant” is that no such antithesis is recognised in international law. The counterpart of the lawful combatant is the civilian, who is entitled to the ordinary protection of the law. 

Kathryn Stone OBE and Professor Karen Bryan offer advice on identifying and communicating with witnesses with learning difficulties    

John Kampfner sums up the current arguments on libel law reform 

Paul Farrelly, the Labour MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, is what Tony Blair might have called a feral beast turned hunted prey. A former reporter, he opted for politics in 2001. Since then he has been a doughty human rights campaigner. It was his question to the Justice Secretary in October 2009 about the injunction obtained following publication of the Minton Report on the dumping by Trafigura of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast which brought home to Parliament the activities of claimant legal firms in getting “super-injunctions”. 

Tony Shaw QC and Clive Freedman discuss the draft Guidelines on Information Security and Government Work 

John Curtis investigates the use of Shakespeare’s quotes in legal judgments 

Richard Jones QC meets the President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Professor Terence Stephenson 

David Wurtzel meets Dominic Grieve QC MP 

While his colleagues have been emphasising how different they will be from the Labour Minister who came before them, the new Attorney General, Dominic Grieve QC MP, prefers to see the development of the law officers’ role as “seamless”. When we met in his Victoria Street office in late July, he explained that he looked back to his Tory predecessors, Patrick Mayhew and Nicholas Lyell. 

Sam Stein QC explains why it’s time to regulate advocacy.  

Consumers are used to making decisions in all aspects of their lives based on their perception of the quality of particular goods or services. They are able to take comfort that consumer goods have been through rigorous checks and are signed off as being fit for purpose before they are sold. The consumer also believes that professionals such as accountants or financial advisers have achieved standards set by their professional bodies and undertaken regular assessments to ensure that they meet the standards expected of them, as do the firm in which they operate. 

QC competency interviews can make even the smoothest lawyers trip up, believes James Hutchinson.  

Mark* peers at me over his spectacles, a look of mild horror spreading over his face. He’s an experienced, successful Chancery counsel in his early 40s and everything I expected: smooth talking, confident and urbane. Five minutes earlier, Mark had wafted confidently into his room in chambers. This is a man who spends his life speaking in court or telling the rich and influential what they can and can’t do. And yet here he was: speechless.