There appears to be a serious attempt underway to breath life back into the Peer Review scheme. I have a number of objections to this not least that it was conceived at a time before the massive cuts in fees made participation in a file beauty parade utterly unviable. But that’s not important right now. […]

I have had a number of clients become embroiled in disputes with the LAA over 2017 Contract office requirements, which they are rigidly enforcing. It has even involved Contract Managers playing “Secret Squirrel” and making unannounced visits to branch offices. Below is a reminder of the main requirements but remember that there are also some […]

Yesterday really was one of those days. The phone went constantly whilst e-mails arrived steadily in the background. We dealt with questions across all current legal aid contracts and pretty much every franchise category, as I still call them. Beyond the general billing queries this included specific and serious cases involving: Termination notices Contract suspensions […]

This by Bonobo is another BBC 6 music steal and is absolutely brilliant. The video is great too with the segment with the black kites is like a scene from our Spanish roof terrace in mid April.  

I have had numerous conversations on the 14-hour rule; the ghostbusting clause in 2017 Crime contract designed to catch out Duty Solicitors not genuinely engaged in at least 2-days “contract work” a week. The reason for this is that the written guidance is far from definitive, even the estimable Crimeline Complete’s attempts to tie this […]

By now I would just be doing greatest hits tours, both for the love of it and to top up the pension scheme. Not Mr Weller however and there is no denying it he is still churning out great new stuff.

In late December 2015 Dean parked his company car for about 15 minutes. We subsequently received a demand for excess parking charges. I will spare the detail but it was essentially one of those scams you will have heard about involving private and not local authority enforcement. After a bit of internet research Dean said, […]

Today we are packing up and tomorrow we start the long, sad trudge back to England. As an experiment Spain has worked, it was just a shame that the civil bid round was put back – much better to be immersed in that here rather than a cold back room in Middlesbrough. This seems vaguely […]

I posed the question, on Twitter; will the 2018 Civil bid round be affected by General Election purdah? Well we now have an answer: 2 May 2017: procurement update – civil 2018 contract In light of the announcement that a General Election is to be held on 8 June it has been necessary to revise […]

We have managed 3 live shows out here in our local music bar (5 mins walk away with excellent Sevillian gin). Two involved very capable covers bands and the third a pretty wild night with Sabor a Calle – singing, standing on the bar etc. – the recorded version is a bit tame by comparison. […]