totallylegal

Pyrrhic victory or ticking bomb: Evans and the future of legal aid

The Evans judicial review judgment sheds an interesting light on legal aid reform pre-Coalition. It is a challenge to changes in the legal aid Funding Code which sought to prevent public interest claims being funded under legal aid, where the legal aid applicant gains no direct benefit for himself or herself from the legal proceedings (unless the public interest related to the Environment).

The case arises from a human rights activist’s challenges to the MODs policy of handing over detainees to the Afghan and Iraqi security services, given the risk that such detainees would suffer torture. Laws LJ underlines the significance of the case early in his judgment by saying that without such challenges, “It seems likely that… …the situation of the detainees liable to be handed over to [the foreign security services] would never have been subject to the scrutiny of the English courts.”

Sunday 10th July 2011: Amicus Jail Break - London

Sunday 10th July 2011
Amicus Jail Break - London

12:00pm - 3:30pm

The Amicus Jail Break is back for 2011! Enter a team of up to 6 people to represent your firm/company/chambers/university to compete in a charity race around London’s landmarks.

Meet us at the Knights Templar Pub on Chancery Lane at 12pm to receive your instructions. Your team will need to follow cryptic clues around central London, answering questions along the way to score the maximum amount of points. There are also points available for the first team to find the finish point. The team with the most points wins. 1st, 2nd and 3rd place teams will all receive a prize. Last year’s prizes included a one week holiday in a Lake District Cottage, a guided tour of the House of Lords and champagne. Join us at the Benugo Bar (British Film Institute, South Bank) for a post-event reception to hear the prize winners announced, for a spot of lunch and a few well deserved drinks.

How to Study and Practise Law Using Mindmaps

How to Study Law using Mindmaps

There has been much written on the best ways to study law. From personal experience, it was difficult to get first class grades in law exams without utilising the tool of mindmaps. The man credited with the invention of the mindmap is Tony Buzan, who can be followed on Twitter at @Tony_Buzan. The below information details my own experience of their use, having used them both to study law when a law student and to understand and further my career in law when practising with a law firm.

The Mindmap Concept

An example of an A3 legal mindmap is produced below. It follows these instructions:

Take a sheet of blank paper. Put a central idea in the middle. Expand lines outward which lead to further ideas. Expand those ideas with further lines to create more ideas, again further from the centre. Now you have a mindmap. Add colour with a highlighter pen or insert pictures if desired. For example, the following mindmap colour code could be quite useful:

Purple – Case Law
Yellow – Important Facts
Green – Comment

Time Running Out for Luddites

This weekend saw some momentous failures in football refereeing decisions at the top of the Premier League, at a time when the climax to the season is being approached and much of the world is watching on television. For those of you not interested in our national sport, I won’t attempt to explain the issues, as it is enough to say that all four of the most significant errors were as clear as day to a watching TV audience, but such evidence or other technological assistance was denied to the poor souls who have to officiate the game.

This ludicrous state of affairs was neatly put into context by James Lawton, Chief Sports Writer of The Independent, saying, “the laws of football were first codified in 1863 or, put another way, before the American civil war was resolved, Leo Tolstoy published War and Peace and Mark Twain Huckleberry Finn, and, most relevantly, 63 years earlier than John Logie Baird provided the first demonstration of televised moving images”.

Find your career passion

I am currently reading a fantastic book called Get a Life Not a Job by Paula Caligiuri Ph.D. It is part academic, part story and part practical.

It veers away from the genre of ‘abandon ship’ but rather focuses on weaving in your passion around your existing career (without causing conflict) and building multiple ‘career acts’.

However, I think the book is too radical for a lot of solicitors, and, in any event, quite a few are still in the nascent stages of their career and are not ready to start moonlighting.

The important point to note though is that given how much of our life we spend at work (94,365 hours according to Dr Caligiuri), it is incredibly important to make sure that you don’t end up in a job you hate or one where you feel you are doing out your time: “Only another 10 years to go” – how depressing.