Understand Your Rights. Solve Your Legal Problems
A man who left a negative review of law firm Summerfield Browne Solicitors on the Trustpilot website has been ordered to pay £25,000 in libel damages.
Philip James Waymouth hired the firm for advice in a dispute over the enforcement of a court order for a £200 fixed fee.
He then left a review on Summerfield Browne’s Trustpilot page, accusing the firm of being “another scam solicitor” and a “total waste of money”.
The firm launched brought a claim against Waymouth at the High Court in London, arguing that Waymouth’s statements were untrue and defamatory, and that its number of business enquiries had dropped since the review’s publication.
Judge Master David Cook, ruling in favour of Summerfield Browne, stated that the words used in the review "had a clear tendency to put people off dealing with the claimant firm" and that Waymouth had “never fully articulated” why he was unhappy with Summerfield Browne’s work.
Waymouth did not attend the online hearing or send a legal representative.
Following attention from news outlets, Summerfield Browne’s Trustpilot review page has been bombarded with one-star reviews . Numerous reviewers also alleged that the firm’s website tracks user sessions using Google Analytics without asking permission, a violation of GDPR.
Trustpilot first placed a notice on the Summerfield Browne page urging only genuine clients to leave a review, before disabling reviews altogether.
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“Although we understand you want to voice your opinion about things in the news and issues trending on social media, Trustpilot is a place for feedback based on genuine buying and service experiences,” Trustpilot said.
In a subsequent statement, the review site voiced opposition to the High Court's judgement, noting that it had not been given the opportunity to make any representation in the case and that Waymouth's review had not been flagged through its complaints process.
"We believe there are a number of errors within the judgement, and it raises significant concerns around freedom of speech," Trustpilot said. "Whilst the circumstances of this case are highly unusual, the outcome will ultimately not lead to a positive position for anyone - consumers or businesses - and it is much better for businesses to engage, respond and improve upon the feedback they receive, rather than using legal action to silence consumers."
Trustpilot also announced its intention to challenge any order it might receive to remove Waymouth's review.
Summerfield Browne Solicitors is a commercial and private law firm with offices in London, Birmingham, Cambridge, Leicester and Oxford.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the California Resources Board have ended their investigations into Ford Motor Company’s gas mileage and emissions certification processes.
In its annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, Ford said that it had been notified that the DOJ and California had closed their investigations and “do not intend to take further action” but added that probes by the US Environmental Protection Agency and its Canadian counterpart will continue.
In 2018, a group of Ford employees reported possible problems with a mathematical formula used by the company to calculate mileage and pollution. Ford launched an investigation into whether it had understated emissions and overstated gas mileage across a range of its vehicles.
The company declined to release the findings of its own investigation and said that it has not changed any of its fuel economy ratings in light of it.
However, Ford still faces a class action lawsuit from vehicle owners who claim the company “cheated on its fuel economy testing on some of its best-selling and most popular trucks”. The lawsuit has claimed that independent testing on Ford vehicles showed that the firm did not follow appropriate coastdown testing procedures in its design process.
In an email with Law360. A Ford spokesperson said the company was pleased to learn that the investigations had been closed. "This is consistent with the company's own investigation and conclusion that we appropriately completed our certification processes,” they said.
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Ford declined to comment on the class action lawsuit, but argues in court papers that should be dismissed as “implausible”.
The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) acted unlawfully when it attempted to compel US engineering company KBR to hand over documents held overseas during an investigation.
Supreme Court Judges unanimously disagreed with a 2018 High Court ruling that notices issued under section 2(3) of the Criminal Justice Act 1987. have extra-territorial reach. The ruling deals a blow to the SFO’s ability to gather evidence held outside the UK.
"The presumption against extra-territorial effect clearly applies in this case because KBR Inc is not a UK company, and has never had a registered office or carried on business in the UK," the court stated.
The court also rejected the argument that parliament had intended Section 2(3) to grant the SFO the power to compel foreign companies to produce documents held outside the UK. In judgement, Lord Lloyd-Jones pointed to successive acts of parliament that have developed structures in domestic law that allow the UK to participate in mutual legal assistance internationally, arguing that it was “inherently improbable” that the government would have intended for a parallel system to allow the SFO to obtain evidence from abroad without any recourse to courts.
The SFO argued that Section 2 extra-territorial powers were integral to its ability to investigate multinational corporations with complex international structures, but said that it welcomed the court’s clarification.
“Given almost all of its cases involve some element of overseas evidence gathering, this decision will be disappointing for the SFO – not least since, following Brexit, it no longer has access to European Investigation Orders,” former SFO general counsel Alun Milford told City A.M.
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The SFO opened a bribery and corruption investigation into KBR in 2017, initially with the company’s cooperation. However, when the SFO issued a Section 2 notice to a US-based senior executive during a meeting in Britain, KBR applied for a judicial review to have it quashed.
Florida-based voting machine company Smartmatic filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Fox News, three of its top hosts, and two former lawyers for former President Donald Trump for pushing a damaging conspiracy theory involving the company’s machines and their role in the 2020 US presidential election.
The 285-page complaint, which was filed in New York state, is one of the largest libel lawsuits ever undertaken in the US.
Smartmatic’s suit follows similar legal action from voting machine company Dominion, which also found itself at the centre of unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. Unlike Dominion, whose technology was used in 24 states, Smartmatic’s machines were only used in the heavily Democratic-leaning Los Angeles County.
According to the complaint, in the aftermath of the presidential election Fox News aired at least 13 reports falsely claiming that the company had colluded with Venezuela’s socialist government to steal the vote for then-candidate Joe Biden in 2020.
“Defendants’ story was a lie,” Smartmatic said in its complaint. “But, it was a story that sold.”
The company claimed that the disinformation jeopardised client contracts and caused a slew of death threats to be sent to employees and their families. It estimated that it will lose as much as $690 million in profits over the next five years as a result of the conspiracy theory.
Smartmatic is demanding $2.7 billion in damages and a full retraction of all false statements made by Fox News Network, its hosts Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro, and former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
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“Fox News’ disinformation campaign had a direct and harmful impact on Smartmatic’s ability to conduct business in the United States and around the world now and in the future,” Smartmatic said in a statement on its legal action.
Smartmatic will be represented by Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, LLP.
Conveyancer - Leeds
A well-known local law firm is currently seeking an experienced Residential Conveyancing Fee Earner to join them on either a full or part time basis. The role is predominantly for a residential conveyancer, although the role may include elements of non-standard residential documents such as easements, transfers into trust and intra-family transfers.
This is a busy and forward-thinking team who deal with more bespoke residential property transactions, as the emphasis is on quality rather than quantity of instructions.
You will be managing a caseload of files including, Buying, Selling and Mortgaging residential properties (freehold and leasehold). General Property work such as inter-family transfers and Deeds of Grant for easements including transfers of part. Plot sales – these are sales on small development sites with the potential of setting up the sales packs on such sites.
We are seeking energetic and bright candidates who will get on well with clients and fit in with the friendly environment at the firm. Candidates will have 3 years or more PQE within residential conveyancing. You will have the ability to work with limited supervision and be willing to supervise others where necessary and appropriate to experience.
Application
To apply click here
David Howson, CEO of Six Degrees, looks back at the progress firms have made in the face of adversity and where they can improve further.
The last year has been a monumental jolt for businesses across the UK, and the legal industry is no different. An industry that has historically been conservative in its adoption of new technologies has had to quickly reevaluate its foundations and figure out how to move an entire workforce to remote working without disrupting the day-to-day. That being said, it has adapted and rebounded incredibly well in the face of disruption. Firms have ‘kept calm and carried on’, making sure that clients are still being serviced to the same standard as usual.
While technology has been pushed further up the agenda, one could worry that other longstanding sector priorities – attracting new talent, offering a better work-life balance, and finding ways to provide better client experiences – could be slipping off the agenda. In actual fact, however, we’re seeing the complete opposite.
Surprisingly – or perhaps not to all to the technology evangelists among you – growing technology adoption is having a knock-on impact on other priorities the legal sector has had for years. Over half of employees in the UK legal sector say working from home has improved their work-life balance, a tremendous feat for an industry that is synonymous with long working hours. The move to remote working is also pushing the sector to meet the expectations of flexibility that generation Z and millennials have of the workplace. While in-person client meetings have had to change to virtual meetings, the situation has also pushed the industry to carefully think about how they can differentiate themselves in improving the client experience and meeting their growing expectations.
While the sector has been adapting to today’s world, and even seeing some unexpected benefits, no one knows for sure what a typical business will look like in six months, a year, or beyond. The ratio of office to home workers may change several times internally and within client organisations, and the processes and technology that underpin businesses will need to flex to support these changes and enable them to grow.
Over half of employees in the UK legal sector say working from home has improved their work-life balance
A big part of any law firm’s mission is ensuring that it stays as safe as possible amidst all this change. UK law firms were attacked online nearly 700,000 times last year, 20% more often than in the previous year. Cybercriminals have seen the mass move to remote working as an opportunity and this trend doesn't look to be waning. While the types of threats haven’t changed, mass remote working has opened vulnerabilities that are much easier to exploit and have consequently led to this rise.
As many employees are no longer within the four walls of their firms, they are often therefore outside of their corporate networks. This fact, combined with the expected continued uncertainty 2021 poses for working patterns, means that IT departments need to expect the unexpected when it comes to devising their cyber security strategies.
Now for the good news – there are steps businesses can take to mitigate these rising risks, while also addressing one of the other industry priorities I mentioned earlier: enhancing the client experience. Many firms are seeing this situation as an opportunity to take back control of their IT, using it not just to keep the business running, but to provide it with a competitive advantage.
Security-first cloud solutions can provide clients with assurances of safety, reliability, and compliance during this tumultuous time. Having access to highly resilient architectures can minimise downtime, while agile solutions enable firms to maximise productivity – enabling their fee earners to get the absolute most out of each billable hour.
Your clients are no doubt facing similar concerns about security as they undergo similar organisational changes, and this is where demonstrating that your technology and infrastructure is ‘secure by design’ rather than security being a bolted-on extra will help to provide a competitive edge.
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2021 will be a year like no other for the UK legal sector. From the establishment of entirely virtual legal teams to the creation of new client-centric experiences, it will provide firms with more opportunities to differentiate and grow their businesses as a result of this unexpected disruption. Ensuring cyber security strategies are focused on aligning people, processes, and systems, and are set up to be as flexible as possible, will therefore be key this year. That way, firms can focus on the business priorities of today while feeling safe in the knowledge that they are also set up for a successful and exciting future.
Global consultancy firm McKinsey & Company has agreed to pay $573 to settle claims by more than 40 US states related to its role in the nation’s opioid epidemic, US media reported on Wednesday.
Sources familiar with the matter said that McKinsey’s settlement is with 43 states, the District of Columbia and three territories. Several attorney generals said they planned to make announcements on the opioid epidemic on Thursday, coinciding with the filing of the settlement.
$478 million of the settlement must be paid within 60 days, according to the New York Times. In total, the settlement will exceed any profits the firm made from its opioid-related work with pharmaceutical companies.
The company will not admit wrongdoing as part of the deal.
McKinsey has come under scrutiny for its role in advising drugmaker Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family which owns the company. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey claimed in a lawsuit that McKinsey advised the Sacklers on how they could “turbocharge the sales engine” for opioids.
Purdue reached an $8 billion plea deal with authorities in October to resolve its role in driving the opioid crisis.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that almost half a million Americans died due to overdoses from prescription and illegal opioids between 1999 and 2018.
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More than 3,200 lawsuits are still pending against US drugmakers, distributors and pharmacies for driving opioid addiction through deceptive marketing or ignoring signs that prescription drugs were being diverted for improper uses.
State and local governments have also been holding negotiations for settlements with drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and distributors Cardinal Health Inc, Amerisourcebergen Corp and McKesson Corp.
Goodwin Procter LLP suffered a data breach after a vendor that it uses for large file transfers was hacked, according to an internal memo obtained by news outlets.
The memo, circulated on Tuesday by managing partner Mark Battencourt, said Goodwin was notified of the security issue on 22 January and immediately stopped using the service. The firm also retained the services of a third-party forensic expert an launched an investigation into the breach.
“Our investigation revealed a small percentage of our clients may have experienced unauthorized access to or acquisition of confidential material” on 20 January, Battencourt said in the memo. "Clients whose data may have been directly impacted as a result of this matter have been notified, and we have also communicated the security incident to all firm clients."
The investigation also revealed that “only a few Goodwin employees were affected” by a breach, all of whom had also been notified. The memo added that none of the firm’s resources appeared to have been impacted other than the file transfer service.
"Please know that we were running the most current version of the service and following all directions to ensure the proper maintenance of the system," the memo said, noting that security patches were being deployed as soon as they were made available.
Goodwin confirmed the accuracy of the memo when approached by Bloomberg, but declined to comment further.
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The Boston-based Global 50 firm is only the latest firm to have suffered a data breach. Seyfarth Shaw LLP confirmed in October that it had suffered a ransomware attack, forcing it to shut down several of its systems, and Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks confirmed in May that troves of data on their celebrity clients had been stolen by hackers.
Law firms make attractive targets for cyberattacks due to the volume of sensitive information their systems store. Hacking attempts on major firms are rapidly increasing in frequency, prompting many to invest in greater cybersecurity measures for 2021.
Our industry partner, Simply Law Jobs, has announced that the legal job site is undergoing the biggest transformation in its 18 year history.
Based on in-depth research into the industry, as well as extensive feedback and insights provided by Simply Law Jobs clients and jobseekers, the site will be relaunched with a brand new look, new and exciting features and old favourites which have been updated or revamped.
The job site has been optimised so jobseekers and recruiters can connect in the quickest and easiest way possible. This includes better search filters, enhanced candidate profiles, prompts to provide better job advert descriptions and an improved candidate management system to manage job applications more efficiently.
The relaunch also aims to eliminate common bugbears of jobseekers such as the time spent applying for vacancies and not hearing back from employers after applying for jobs.
In a recent survey, 32% of Simply Law Jobs users claimed that job adverts don’t provide the information which they are looking for. With the new prompts to provide better job advert descriptions, jobseekers can gain a better understanding of the job responsibilities, skill requirements, benefits and company culture.
This will help jobseekers better match themselves to relevant career opportunities before taking the time to apply for jobs. Recruiters will also benefit by receiving a better quality of application.
In the same survey, 42% of users claimed the most frustrating part about job hunting was not hearing back from a recruiter after applying. With an improved candidate management system, recruiters can update candidates on the status of their application at the click of a button.
In a recent survey, 32% of Simply Law Jobs users claimed that job adverts don’t provide the information which they are looking for.
Better communication will improve the candidate experience and allow jobseekers to concentrate on the next stage of the recruitment process, whether that be applying for other jobs or preparation for an interview.
For the first time ever, the revamped site will allow jobseekers to apply for jobs using their Simply Law Jobs profile instead of their CV. The candidate profiles allows jobseekers to showcase their talent, skills and experience which means a better chance of reaching the interview stage and landing their dream job.
The relaunch was triggered in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. When the first national lockdown was announced in March 2020, recruitment activity was put on hold for many employers.
Dave Capper, Simply Law Jobs Director said, “As soon as the lockdown restrictions were imposed, activity on the site did slow down. While it wasn’t ideal, it did give us the opportunity to sit back and reflect on where we could make improvements.”
He continued, "We reached out to clients and jobseekers to ask them what they loved about Simply Law Jobs, what they didn’t and what could be implemented to improve their experience. We always knew that we wanted to provide a platform inspired by the needs of the people who use it most.”
The relaunch, going live mid March, is just phase one of the regeneration. Phase two will concentrate on career development and creating a community in which professionals can connect. This will include mentorship guidance, career case studies, upskilling opportunities, end to end career guidance and much more.
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Capper said, “After reaching out to our jobseekers, we discovered that there was a need to expand our offerings. Our focus has always been on connecting jobseekers with jobs, but our future vision is to support professionals from the minute they consider joining the legal industry, through the process of gaining their qualifications and experience, during the job search and throughout the course of their career. We want to be there every step of the way!”
Phase two of the relaunch is expected to go live in May 2021.
Elizabeth Hughes, specialist in family law at Parker Bullen, outlines the issues facing COVID-hit couples desiring a divorce and the possible avenues for funding available to them.
The current pandemic has put huge pressures on couples and families, putting even the strongest relationships under strain with reports from across the globe of a rise in marital break-ups and applications for divorce. Some even refer to a COVID ‘break-up boom’.
With job losses on the rise and the prospects of more looming, many people are struggling financially and therefore wondering how to pay for a divorce. With the average cost of divorce hovering around £15,000 this is no small concern. This problem is compounded by the fact that, since 2013, there has been a dramatic reduction in legal aid. Divorce numbers may be on the rise, but how many more divorces are being put off due to financial concerns?
We’re used to the media hype around ‘divorce day’, due to the big rush to divorce following the Christmas break. In reality, there are peaks and troughs during the year. However, the post-Christmas divorce peak is widely explained by the stress Christmas can cause some families – enforced family time plus the added pressures of preparation and celebration. The Christmas period is also commonly a time when people reflect on where their life is and where they’d like it to be, which in itself can be a catalyst for relationship breakdown. It’s not just Christmas that can lead to marital break-up; applications for divorce tend to rise after families spend a long time together, peaking after school holidays, for example.
COVID-19 magnifies all these issues and more. Spouses are being locked down together for weeks, maybe months. Young marriages are coming unstuck as couples face immense pressures early in their relationship. For those with children, there’s the added pressure of 24/7 parenting plus the challenges of home schooling. Moreover, financial worries - a common factor in divorce – are all too common. Some people are coming to terms with redundancy, others lower pay due to being furloughed and many more are worried about their jobs. In terms of the pandemic, vaccines undoubtedly provide light at the end of the tunnel. However, the economic fallout and therefore the financial impact on families could last for years.
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COVID-19's financial impact on marriage could well be two-fold – contributing to a rise in relationship break-ups now, as well as a rise in people putting off initiating divorce proceedings due to financial concerns. One of the many reasons I hear for clients’ putting off seeing a family solicitor is their “need to get finances sorted first”.
Where a couple can’t fund a divorce through private funds, what options are available? Currently, eligibility for Legal Aid is very limited, with it largely being preserved for victims of domestic abuse and Public Law child care cases. One option is a commercial loan or re-mortgaging, both of which can be advised by an IFA, an IFA can also advise whether a spouse is eligible for a litigation loan. As many lawyers know, legal expenses insurance is a common bolt-on to car or home insurance policies so costs could be covered there. Additionally, a spouse could apply to the court for a Legal Services Order or Maintenance Pending Suit for non-legal fees.
Surely we need to make couples who may be struggling more aware of the funding options that are available to them. Otherwise, as we begin to emerge from this pandemic and the economy starts to recover it may not be a marriage boom we see, but a spike in divorce.
