A Lawyer Speaks

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Millions of consumers will each be able to claim compensation of between £45 and £70 after the Competition Appeal Tribunal gave its approval yesterday to the settlement of long-running litigation against Mastercard. The credit card company agreed to pay £200 million in settlement of a class action originally value...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Offenders serving between one and four years who have been released from prison on licence and then recalled for breaching their licence conditions will generally be freed after a further 28 days, the justice secretary announced yesterday . At present, release is a matter for the Parole Board. It’s the latest atte...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com “The independent judiciary — the cornerstone of the rule of law — is an integral part of what the UK has to offer to the world,” the lady chief justice of England and Wales said last night. Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill was addressing a court-full of senior judges and international visitors about the judicia...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Jonathan Fisher KC is to conduct an independent review of fraud offences, the Home Office confirmed this week. A leading specialist in financial and corporate crime at Red Lion Chambers , Fisher was originally commissioned by the Conservative government in October 2023 to conduct a two-stage review of disclosure —...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com “These tweets would not have been pleasant for any judge to read,” the barristers’ disciplinary tribunal said in a ruling published last week . “The remarks may even be thought to be hurtful. But they are not gravely damaging to the judiciary and in our judgment it is not arguable that they are. We take the view t...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Solicitors who are approached by wealthy new clients should take greater care to ensure they are not facilitating kleptocracy, state capture or grand corruption, a new report recommends . Lawyers — particularly commercial firms in the City of London — are told it’s not good enough merely to comply with anti-money...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Despite reports that the government is seeking to rush legislation through parliament, a revised sentencing guideline on the imposition of community and custodial sentences will take effect in England and Wales tomorrow. As I reported last week , the Sentencing Council has rejected a request from the justice secre...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com The UK Supreme Court will spend most of this week hearing a rare criminal appeal by two former traders who worked in the financial markets. Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo both served substantial prison sentences for conspiracy to defraud after they were convicted, in separate trials, of rigging interest rates. Their...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Professor Richard Susskind CBE KC (hon), a prolific legal author, used to joke about writing the same book every couple of years. But How to Think About AI: a Guide for the Perplexed — his 12th book, published tomorrow — is rather different. Inexpensive, modestly priced and attractively produced in hardback by Oxf...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Lawyers are sometimes failing to meet the ethical standards expected of them, according to the Legal Services Board . The oversight body that regulates the legal regulators in England and Wales is launching a consultation today on upholding professional ethical duties . This sets out five “outcomes” that regulator...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com The body that advises the government on law reform in England and Wales is suggesting a new test for referring suspected miscarriages of justice to the Court of Appeal. At present, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) cannot send a case to the appeal court unless it considers that there is a “real possibili...

The director general of MI5 told the independent commissioner who oversees his work that the security service had given false evidence in court shortly before the security service told the courts themselves. As investigatory powers commissioner , Sir Brian Leveson oversees the use of covert powers by more than 600 public authorities, including the UK’s intelligence agencies, law enforcement agenci...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Does it matter who our judges are? Yes, says an academic lawyer who has just published the fruits of his empirical research. Different judges exercise their power in different ways, according to a new book by Dr Lewis Graham , fellow in law at Christ’s College Cambridge. Some judges are more comfortable with pushi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com A judge who agreed that the schoolgirl Sara Sharif could live with her father and stepmother was “deeply upset” when they murdered her, I was told last week. Sir Rupert Jackson, a retired appeal judge who has known Alison Raeside for many years, said she was “as upset about this as everyone else and all your liste...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Eyebrows were raised just before Christmas when a serving judge was apparently nominated as a new political peer. But although the Downing Street statement was not entirely clear, Her Honour Judge Levitt KC had very properly resigned from the judiciary just a few hours before the announcement of her appointment as...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Court challenges to major building projects will be limited under plans announced by the prime minister yesterday. In a press release , Downing Street said: Data shows that over half – 58% – of all decisions on major infrastructure were taken to court, getting in the way of the government’s central mission to grow...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com As I reported in some detail yesterday afternoon, the chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission has decided to leave her job after an independent panel concluded by a majority that she should no longer head the body that reviews suspected miscarriages of justice. Successive justice secretaries had lost confide...

A proposed new duty requiring barristers to advance and promote equality, diversity and inclusion would be “unlawful and misguided”, the incoming chair of the Bar Council said last night . Barbara Mills KC, who took over this month as leader of the 18,000 barristers in England and Wales, said she was concerned that the bar’s regulator was seeking to use the barristers’ code of conduct “as the vehi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com Ariel, the magician’s “trusty spirit”, speaks with Prospero in The Tempest about magic bringing about a “sea change”, a transformative power creating something “rich and strange”. As befits a lawyer who read English at Oxford, Jonathan Kewley drew on Shakespeare to describe artificial intelligence in a lecture ear...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com How can we reduce trial delays of two or even three years in the Crown Court? Yesterday, I reported a suggestion from the director of public prosecutions Stephen Parkinson that was promptly skewered in the comments section by Ian Kelcey and Tom Crowther . Parkinson had also suggested that we might explore some ide...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com A bill that would make it illegal to create or solicit sexually explicit or intimate images without the consent of the people in them will be considered by the House of Lords next week. The bill would cover deepfake content, where photos or video are digitally manipulated to make a person appear to be in an intima...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com We are used to the idea of the criminal law penalising us when we do bad things. But there’s an increasing tendency for the state to punish large organisations for doing nothing at all. The latest example of this is the new offence of failure to prevent fraud , which takes effect next autumn. Statutory guidance wa...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com The death of George Carman QC at the age of 71 meant — as I told readers of the Daily Telegraph at the beginning of 2001 — that the age of the great advocate was at an end: Until now. The 25 pages Carman managed to complete before his death form the starting point of a new book called Get Carman , which records hi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com What retired senior judges choose to say about major issues of the day is of real interest and importance — particularly when they are discussing legal issues — a former head of civil justice said last night. Lord Dyson, who retired as master of the rolls in 2016 and then rejoined the chambers he used to head as a...

Spare a thought for Robert Jenrick. A few hours after being appointed shadow justice secretary — with Kieran Mullan alongside him as the shadow justice minister — Jenrick was bounced back onto his bench by the formidable Alex Davies-Jones. His questions may read well in Hansard but the two minutes of video that I have posted above show how badly the defeated leadership candidate misjudged the posi...