Understand Your Rights. Solve Your Legal Problems
A number of UK law firms are issuing “COVID bonuses” to their lawyers in recognition of their work during the pandemic.
International firm DLA Piper is offering staff a choice of an additional week’s pay or a week’s holiday on top of regular pay reviews and bonus awards set to go ahead over the next few months. Simon Levine, the firm’s global co-chief executive, said that staff had performed exceptionally throughout the health crisis.
“Their fortitude, supportiveness and collaboration with colleagues, clients and our communities has been remarkable. The extra week’s pay or holiday is just one small way of us saying thank you to them for everything they have achieved in such a challenging year,” he said.
Other law firms have also committed to issuing pandemic bonuses to employees.
Lawyers and support staff at Allen & Overy will be given a one-time bonus equivalent to 5% of their annual salary, which a spokesperson said is “in recognition of their hard work and contributions in very challenging circumstance over the last 12 months”.
Like DLA Piper’s bonus offers, Allen & Overy’s staff bonuses will be granted in addition to their usual performance bonuses and salary reviews.
Meanwhile, Ashurst has doubled the size of its bonus pool and is preparing to issue £1,000 rewards to all of their global staff in July. Paul Jenkins, Ashurst’s global managing partner, credited the firm’s performance in 2020 to “a great team effort”, necessitating the additional bonuses.
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£1,000 cash awards are also being issued by Walker Morris to their partners as thanks for their “incredible support” in the last financial year.
The bonus announcements follow on the heels of other City law firms issuing rewards to their staff for exceptional performance during the pandemic. Clifford Chance, Herbert Smith Freehills and Linklaters have all pledged to issue 5% bonuses to their staff in recognition of good work during an unusually punishing year.
UK law firms are now positioning themselves to tackle the new year and an expected rise in financial services litigation over the terms of pandemic loans issued in 2020. Individuals struggling with debt of their own may benefit from advice on loan repayments.
Much like running any type of organisation, managing a law firm requires the ability to make sound decisions. You need to allocate your resources properly and create systems that raise productivity and reduce overhead.
On top of this, there is also a need to finance marketing activities and make payments on malpractice premiums, and there's a good chance that you might overlook details that could have a big impact on the bottom line. To help maintain your law firm's revenue stream, here are a few tips you can follow:
To start, take a look at your firm's expenses and revenue stream. If the former surpasses the latter, then it is high time to make crucial changes. Identify what you want to reduce or maximise. Most firms would focus exclusively on reducing their cost-per-client metric. Others would put more effort in generating high quality leads in a bid to raise profitability.
Regardless of your goals, you should have a realistic number to aim for. If your firm specialises in personal injury cases, aim for a benchmark of 45 leads per month. This will depend mostly on the number of lawyers you have that work in this area, so always aim for a target that follows the SMART model.
Attorneys may be the lifeblood of any law firm since they are the ones that generate revenue, but it's your billing system that puts your financials in order. Without an effective system for tracking billable hours and unpaid invoices, your attorneys risk not getting paid for the actual amount of work they put in.
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An effective workaround to this is accurate timekeeping. Have your attorneys take note of every client correspondence, double check their invoices, and report any issues or inaccuracies. Doing so prevents the risk of billable hours falling through the cracks.
Considering the amount of work that's involved, your firm has to spend money on paralegals and assistants. Having too many on the payroll will only drain funds faster, but on the other hand, having less staff on board would mean stretching yourself and your lawyers too thin. It's because of this dilemma that law firms consider outsourcing activities such as legal research, marketing, and day-to-day admin work to freelancers and virtual assistant agencies.
Law firms can also choose to automate attendance policies and use practice management software for everything else such as time tracking, calendar management, and contact database management. Whether it’s delegating tasks to offshore assistants or using the latest tools, both of these options can optimise your productivity at a lesser overhead.
There are other ways that can help maintain a positive cash flow for your law firm, but the important thing here is to be proactive when seeking out issues that eat into the bottom line. It’s your role as the managing partner to prevent these issues from surfacing and create opportunities for further expansion.
Lawyer Monthly hears from Elliott Fellowes and Kate Gee of Signature Litigation as they examine the state of the cryptocurrency ecosystem and what is being done to tackle fraudulent activity within it.
Regulators and central banks may not like it, but Bitcoin’s recent trillion-dollar market valuation and Tesla's $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin have made big headlines in 2021. As the biggest single investor by far, Elon Musk has joined a global army of Bitcoin holders which is now estimated at 30 million worldwide.
These investors have been attracted by Bitcoin’s sharp price rise and the accompanying blitz of media coverage about it. However, while Bitcoin may have been the first cryptocurrency (and is now the most famous and valuable), the use of others such as Ethereum, XRP and Litecoin is rapidly growing too. All of these are built on blockchain, or distributed ledger technology (DLT).
However, despite increased appetite to invest in cryptocurrencies and increasing institutional acceptance, such as JP Morgan’s newly announced “Cryptocurrency Exposure Basket”, cryptocurrencies are still regarded as highly volatile and controversial. This is in large part due to their opaque ownership structure, which is inherent in investments underpinned by DLT.
Governments and regulators are keen to support the use and expansion of DLT as it has many potential applications, including the secure sharing of medical data, cross-border payments, supply chain and logistics monitoring, real estate processing and voting mechanisms.
Central banks are also looking at future opportunities for digital currencies which they issue and regulate (CBDCs). The Bank for International Settlements and seven central banks have published a report laying out the key requirements for CBDCs, indicating that they consider that CBDCs have real potential to operate as an alternative to fiat (paper) currencies, which at present give these banks control over how much money is printed and in circulation.
Governments and regulators are keen to support the use and expansion of DLT.
However, there remains a lack of regulation in this space on a global level. Current regulatory powers are insufficient to control how crypto asset companies conduct their business and how cryptocurrencies are used in society, providing opportunities for misuse by fraudsters and criminals.
The lack of transparency is also a major concern. Without being subject to either government or central bank control, the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently detailed the use of cryptocurrencies in both terrorist financing and money laundering. Meanwhile the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, said that Bitcoin has been involved in “some interesting and totally reprehensible money laundering activity.” In the UK, there has been some reluctance to regulate crypto-assets in the same way as other jurisdictions (such a Gibraltar, which claimed to be the first jurisdiction to introduce a regulatory framework for DLT). However, the FCA's announcement that from 10 January 2021 all crypto-asset businesses carrying on activity in the UK must be registered indicates that change is coming.
Another principal concern is crypto fraud. Among the most high profile global crypto frauds to date are cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes, for example PlusToken (which defrauded investors out of approximately $2.9 billion via an exit scam) and WoToken (which operated a similar scheme, and netted over $1 billion for the fraudsters). Other forms of crypto fraud include hacking, unregulated or fake brokers and wholesale fraudulent crypto-currency exchange platforms. In 2020 in the UK alone, around £113 million was lost as a result of fraudulent cryptocurrency investments with a further £14.3 million lost in January 2021.
The English courts are seeing an increase in litigation involving cryptocurrencies, and this is a trend that we expect to continue. This requires the courts to deal with some novel legal issues. Usefully, the English courts have a range of interim and enforcement powers at their disposal, which they are deploying to assist claimants in recovering crypto-assets lost to fraud. For example, the High Court has followed the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce's statement that crypto-assets, including cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, are property, and has granted proprietary injunctions to prevent further dealing whilst proceedings are ongoing (see AA v Persons Unknown [2019] EWHC 3556 (Comm)).
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Further, the Commercial Court in London recently heard its first initial coin offering (ICO) fraud case: Ion Science Limited & Duncan Johns v Persons Unknown unreported), 21 December 2020 (Commercial Court) ICO's are essentially the crypto-equivalent of IPOs, and in this case the fraudster induced the applicants to transfer Bitcoin in the belief that they were investing in legitimate crypto-assets. Again, the court held that crypto-assets were property under common law and granted proprietary injunctions in favour of the applicants.
The judgment is significant as the applicants required permission to serve out of the jurisdiction against persons unknown. The court found that the lex situs (i.e. where the property was located) was the place where the person or company owning the crypto-asset is domiciled.
Importantly in Ion Science, the Court also granted permission to serve disclosure orders (Bankers Trust orders) on two cryptocurrency exchanges through which the applicant's stolen Bitcoin had been traced. The decision marked a sea change from earlier authorities, as the exchanges in question were located outside of the jurisdiction of England and Wales. This decision, together with the powers of the court of England and Wales to order proprietary injunctions with respect to crypto-assets, makes the jurisdiction an attractive forum for potential claimants.
Market expectation is that the use of cryptocurrencies and crypto-assets will continue to grow. It is not hard to see that the increased trading and holding of crypto-assets will likely lead to more crypto-related disputes. Looking forward to the next decade, we anticipate that crypto-asset claims will dominate fraud litigation in the English courts.
Encouragingly, the English court is taking a proactive role in the global fight against cyber and cryptocurrency fraud. Its willingness to adapt its traditional weapons for use in this developing area demonstrates that it is an effective forum in which to bring actions involving crypto-assets. As ICO and crypto-related disputes continue to increase, so too will the use of interim injunctions to further factual investigations and to protect assets underpinning the litigation. The AA v Persons Unknown and Ion Science judgments are likely to act as a blueprint for future claims and, in a similar vein, we should expect to see more innovative use of weapons in the Court's toolkit against fraud.
Elliott Fellowes is a commercial and financial services litigation associate at Signature Litigation, specialising in fin-tech and crypto related litigation.
Kate Gee is a commercial litigation senior associate at Signature Litigation, with a special focus on civil fraud, asset-tracing and cryptocurrency litigation.
China has issued retaliatory sanctions again two prominent UK barristers and a leading set of commercial chambers.
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC and Essex Court Chambers were among those accused by the Chinese government of “maliciously spreading lies and disinformation” about human rights abuses in Xinjiang province. The sanctions come days after the UK joined the US, EU and Canada in sanctioning Chinese officials for these abuses.
Kennedy is co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China alongside Ian Duncan Smith MP, who was also sanctioned, and Sir Geoffrey chairs the UK tribunal investigating allegations of genocide against Uighurs and other Muslims.
In February, members of Essex Court issued a legal opinion commissioned by The Global Legal Action Network, stating that there was a “credible case” that China’s actions against the Uighur Muslim minority population in Xinjiang “amounted to crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide”.
Justice Secretary Robert Buckland condemned the new sanctions in a tweet. “Chambers isn’t responsible for an opinion by one of its members; a lawyer shouldn’t be identified with the acts or views of the client, and the rule of law requires lawyers to be able to advise clients and give legal opinions without [foreign] governmental interference,” he wrote.
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Derek Sweeting QC, Chair of the Bar Council, also condemned the move: “The Bar Council strongly condemns any threat against members of the Bar simply for doing their job. Sanctioning a chambers or any legal organisation because a member has given a legal opinion in accordance with their professional obligations is an attack on the rule of law.”
The sanctions also targeted UK politicians and a number of businesses, which have since had their products pulled from prominent Chinese eCommerce platforms.
Clare Fanner, founder of Law Firm Marketing Club, shares new research on clients' expectations and what law firms can do to build a stronger relationship with them.
Our latest research indicates that 90% of clients have positive emotions at the end of their legal matter (regardless of sector), but 44% have not heard from their law firm since the matter was completed.
If you create a customer experience that produces a happy and satisfied client, then why aren’t more law firms building on this to drive repeat business? On completion of a divorce or family issue, for example, why couldn’t you sell your client your other services – legal help with their conveyancing, wills or business needs?
However, what exactly constitutes a happy experience – and how can we ensure that we create the best overall satisfaction for our client so that they return to us again and again? The overarching view is that many law firms don’t really consider their clients as well as they should, and definitely aren’t keeping pace with the adoption of technology / customer service that other organisations serving their customer base have. McKinsey Global Institute conducted research which concluded that data-driven organisations, for example, are 23 times more likely to outperform their competitors in customer acquisition, 6.5 times as likely to retain the acquired customers, and 19 times as likely to be profitable.
And, if we take a brief look outside of the legal sector, there are many lessons lawyers can learn. Amazon, for example, is famous for its customer care and ranked as the most trusted online shopping site in America. The online retailer’s sales rose by 31% last year thanks to its world class customer relationship management strategy. Its strong customer focus and intelligent use of CRM software capturing customer data at the point of purchase revealing details of the customer ‘experience’ is integral to Amazon’s success. Their CRM strategy is in fact disarmingly simple: make it easy to use your online site, ensure your customers get their money’s worth, give them reasons to return, and provide the highest-quality and most efficient customer service you can.
If you create a customer experience that produces a happy and satisfied client, then why aren’t more law firms building on this to drive repeat business?
But how good are we really at listening to our clients and giving them what they want, so that they get that fantastic all-round customer experience that drives them to return?
In our research we asked over 600 people from across the UK with different backgrounds and experiences of dealing with law firms to identify what they really want, need and expect from a law firm. Some of the findings were particularly enlightening.
What predominantly transpired is the importance of using emotional intelligence to communicate and bond with your client, not something that law firms are always renowned for. Understanding how a client ‘feels’ is a crucial part of understanding what clients want, need and expect and is the key to law firms delivering for clients. We know that most legal services are purchased when people are in a heightened emotional state. Interestingly, 74% of clients have ‘negative’ emotions at the start of a legal matter (angry, anxious, helpless, nervous, scared, stressed, vulnerable), whilst – as already outlined earlier - 90% of clients have positive emotions at the end of their matter (happy, satisfied, thankful, relieved, delighted).
But are law firms paying enough attention to how clients feel at the outset of a matter and what they can do to ‘improve’ this for the client? Understanding the emotions that clients have, what is important to them and what they need should be reflected in the messaging, language and marketing communications that law firms are producing. Doing this will give those law firms a big advantage over their competition.
Understanding how a client ‘feels’ is a crucial part of understanding what clients want, need and expect and is the key to law firms delivering for clients.
And take note of this statistic: law firms with a strong EQ (as opposed to IQ) can charge 8% more per hour than their peers.
The most important things clients need from their lawyer and law firm are, ranked in order: Understanding of issues; Price; and Technical ability. There are also opportunities for law firms when it comes to service delivery. Clients want the direct contact details of their lawyer, for instance. Too many law firms and lawyers simply don’t provide this, and yet this is important to 84% of clients. In addition, 79% expect at least weekly updates on their matter and 69% expect a same-day response to their queries.
Law practices should also recognise the clear differences in expectations in some areas for different age groups. The younger generation (under 44 years old) want more ‘out of hours’ access to lawyers (e.g. in the evenings and at weekends) and found online / live chat appealing. Those over the age of 60, on the other hand, didn’t deem online chat particularly important and were more interested in meeting at a place of their choice (e.g. at their home),
Although the differences in expectations by work type and age are predictable, ignore them at your peril. The expectations of your clients are changing. There is a marked difference in expectations for things such as personal contact versus use of technology. You need to grow and develop your services and ensure you continue to meet the needs of clients through the ages.
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Keeping in touch with clients is a topic very dear to most marketers’ hearts. And yet law firms generally aren’t very good at this – a combination of time, data, tools (e.g. having the right software) and know-how is required. When it comes to communicating with clients, law firms are missing a trick with only 26% of clients being contacted when a key date is approaching e.g. a lease renewal, contract clause or a re-mortgage date. Not only that, but – as mentioned earlier - 44% of clients have not heard from their law firms since the conclusion of their matter. And, only 17% of clients have heard from their law firm with information to help them understand how market factors such as COVID-19 and Brexit might affect them.
To conclude, the good news is that there are some massive opportunities here for law firms. It is no longer good enough to ignore what clients expect in terms of support, service and communication. There are no excuses, even with increased flexible and remote working, you must put your clients’ needs at the forefront. If you don’t, others will, and you will lose out. Just don’t let another one bite the dust.
TDR Capital is acquiring BPP University and its subsidiary legal educator, BPP Law School, from owner Vanta Education.
Upon completion of the deal, BPP will be run as a standalone company under its existing management team and remain headquartered in London. It will continue to run its legal courses, which attract around 80,000 students each year.
Graham Gaddes, CEO of BPP, hailed the news and praised TDR’s record of supporting management teams and investing in growth businesses. “This is a significant vote of confidence not only in our business and our management team, but also its strategy and the long-term future of UK higher education and professional training,” he said.
“We believe [TDR] will prove excellent partners for BPP and we are hugely excited by the opportunity to continue building on our successes and achievements across the whole business, helping thousands of professionals and employers achieve their respective goals.”
TDR partner Jon Rosen also spoke optimistically about the acquisition, stating that there were “compelling opportunities to build on [BPP’s] strengths in the face of growing demand for high-quality education courses and training programmes.”
Speculation of a deal began to circulate last week, though insider reports were not confirmed until Wednesday. The university was first put up for sale in June 2019, but was reportedly taken off the market six months later due to lack of interest.
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TDR Capital is a London-based private equity giant with over €8 billion of committed capital and a stated interest in investing in and partnering with market-leading European businesses.
Vanta Education is a global education network owned by funds managed by Apollo Global Management and The Vistria Group. It acquired BPP in 2009 for $607 million.
Next to heart disease and cancer, medical errors are said to be the third major cause of death in the United States, an article published in CNBC.com stated in 2018. The article quoted an eight-year study conducted by Johns Hopkins, which also found out that an average of 250,000 patients die annually due to medical error.
In general terms, medical negligence covers situations where a healthcare practitioner fails to provide the appropriate medical treatment, falls short in performing the correct medical action, or administers inadequate medical treatment, leading to trauma, injuries, or, worse, death.
Contrary to popular notion, it takes more than a surgical mistake to take a medical professional to court. So, how does the law determine medical malpractice and what does a patient have to do in order to file a complaint? Find out below.
Not all forms of injuries or damages incurred from a medical treatment will qualify as medical malpractice. As such, establishing medical negligence is a daunting task, especially if you don’t have a medical malpractice attorney by your side. That being said, always talk to a lawyer before deciding whether or not to pursue the case.
The following components must be proven before the court:
Contrary to popular notion, it takes more than a surgical mistake to take a medical professional to court.
To prove beyond reasonable doubt that a patient suffered an illness or injury as a direct consequence of medical malpractice, testimonies from experts are critical, and so are comparisons to the type of care and attention provided to patients who suffered from the same illness. These vital steps make medical negligence cases time-consuming and complex.
Hence, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to assessing medical errors. If you need help in determining whether your case qualifies, consult legal professionals who can provide you with a sound advice on the best course of action.
Lawsuits pertaining to medical negligence need to be assessed individually by a lawyer. However, these specific situations faced by patients may constitute malpractice on the part of medical practitioners:
Lawsuits pertaining to medical negligence need to be assessed individually by a lawyer.
As an expert, an attorney can assess the merits of your case and provide you with advice on how to proceed.
Expect the lawyer to review your case by asking for copies of pertinent documents, such as medical records, prescriptions, and doctor’s notes, among other documentary evidence. The legal professional will likewise conduct thorough interviews with the patient, family members, and whoever may be privy to the case. The attorney may also attempt to discover the potential causes of medical malpractice in your specific case.
Take note that seasoned attorneys will not push through with the case unless they believe that all the documentary evidence and testimonial interviews are deemed significant and actionable by a medical specialist.
Proving medical malpractice is time-hungry, stressful, and costs a lot of money. That being said, an honest apology from medical workers and the administration itself may help prevent future lawsuits.
Insurance companies likewise prefer to settle with the aggrieved party rather than go through expensive and usually long-term litigation. Insurance firms opt for pre-court settlements because this can help prevent them from paying hefty fines once a lawyer is involved.
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Most people shy away from asking important questions about their health, prognosis, as well as planned treatment. But, with various medical information resources accessible these days, a more proactive approach is needed. Patients can speak up and ask questions about their health, armed with some knowledge on their particular medical condition.
This does not mean that patients should challenge every prognosis and declarations issued by physicians. Being proactive means speaking up if you think there’s something wrong and listening to what your body tells you. After all, you only have one life to live.
The minimum wage increase is crucial, now more than ever, to protect employees from exploitation and ensure they can make a decent living wage. This article will review some of the crucial highlights that you should know about minimum wage laws in 2021.
While local and state minimum wage rates have been on the steady rise over the last few years, the federal minimum wage rate has held steady at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Some federal lawmakers have been keen on raising this rate to $15 an hour.
Supporters insist that this raise is necessary if workers are to earn a decent living wage and reduce poverty rates. On the other hand, those opposed to the federal wage hike argue that it will cost too many jobs and hurt small businesses across different sectors.
With the amount of uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, this federal increase is not likely at the moment. That being said, supporters are optimistic about pushing ahead once things have gone back to normal.
Currently, there are 29 states, and the District of Columbia, that have a minimum wage rate which is higher than the current federal minimum wage. This has been in response to the inaction at the federal level.
As of 1 January, 20 states ushered in the new year with an increase in minimum wage. In 9 of these states, the increase was as a result of legislation passed by state lawmakers. The states in question are Vermont, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, and California. The changes in New York took effect on 31 December 2020. The scheduled wage increase in Michigan was also effectively halted and pushed for later in the year, on account of the state’s unemployment numbers, which stood at more than 8.5% in 2020.
While local and state minimum wage rates have been on the steady rise over the last few years, the federal minimum wage rate has held steady at $7.25 an hour since 2009.
In another nine states, the increase was in line with automatic annual inflation adjustments. These states are Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, South Dakota, and Washington. Each of these states has some provision in their state minimum wage and employment law for the annual adjusting of the wage to reflect changes in prices compared to the preceding year. This adjustment ensures that workers experience no decline in their purchasing power.
For the remaining two states, namely Missouri and Arkansas, the New Year’s raise resulted from ballot measures that voters passed. In addition to these 20 states, five others, namely Virginia, Nevada, Oregon, Connecticut, and Washington, DC, are gearing up for minimum wage increases expected to occur later in the year.
Currently, a total of 44 localities, that is, counties and cities, with a minimum wage that is higher than their state minimum wage rate. Half of these localities hiked their minimum wage on New Year. Again, 13 out of these 44 localities are expected to increase their minimum wage rate later in the year.
There are some significant differences in how the various states are choosing to go about the whole minimum wage rate increases. States like Florida, for example, are choosing to go with gradually increasing the wage over time until it gets to a particular mark. The states consider indicators such as the employment index in the state, as well as the consumer price index.
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Other states, such as Michigan, have provisions to pause any scheduled wage increases if the economy is not doing as well. This was witnessed this year when the wage hike had to be pushed to a later date.
Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, have no minimum wage. In two states, namely, Wyoming and Georgia, there is a minimum wage rate that is lower than the set federal rate. In these states, the federal rate applies only to jobs covered under federal laws. Even within the same state, it is not uncommon to find that the minimum wage rate varies by the size of the employer and the locality, among other considerations.
Beyond the minimum wage hike, employers have to carefully consider their exempt workers. They may need to review salaries for this category of employees or otherwise reclassify them from the exempt status and pay these employees overtime. 2020 saw the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) raise the salary threshold that applies to white-collar exemptions from overtime to $684 a week. In some states, the salary cutoff is much higher.
Some state exempt salary requirements are tied to the minimum-wage thresholds. On the other hand, some states have exempt salary rules that are entirely separate from the minimum-wage thresholds.
An understanding of employment law will help you know if you are being paid a fair wage. Talk to an employment lawyer for more details and representation on wage-related issues and disputes with your employer.
Niall Hearty of financial crime specialists Rahman Ravelli considers the new report and its criticisms of the SFO's response to complaints.
The recently-published HMCPSI (HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate) report on the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) found that the agency was not quick enough in responding to complaints about cases and was not keeping adequate records of disputes. The SFO was, according to the report, taking up to 10 days to acknowledge emails or letters regarding complaints, and often such acknowledgements did not contain enough information. It was critical of the time taken by the SFO to resolve complaints and the levels of communication it offered regarding them.
While the report did go on to say that the general standard of investigation was good, it will arguably have done little to change the minds of those who see the SFO as an organisation that seems to create problems for itself. Its publication was sandwiched between the conviction and sentence of Paul Bond, the last of four men to be jailed over the use of bribery to secure huge oil contracts in Iraq.
This fourth conviction was secured by the SFO in a re-trial and came after the agency’s lengthy and high-profile Unaoil investigation, which uncovered the payment of over $17 million in bribes to secure contracts worth $1.7 billion. But while the conviction and sentencing will have buoyed the mood of the SFO – after what had been a fraught investigation - any celebrations regarding this must have been at least slightly dampened by this report’s criticisms.
The report paints a picture of an agency that is seeking to deliver justice to the victims of serious and complex financial crime and is intent on identifying and punishing those responsible for such wrongdoing. Yet its complaints procedures seem to be falling short – and this is something that does need to be addressed.
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Such a shortcoming goes beyond the issue of what marks out of 10 the SFO would receive in a customer satisfaction survey. A failure to handle complaints adequately damages not just the reputation of the SFO but the wider criminal justice system. At a time when it is having to deal with a backlog of Crown Court trials and criticisms over the implementation of the Nightingale courts, any inability to respond to problems as they are highlighted can only make a tricky situation worse.
Two years ago, the HMCPSI reported that the SFO’s sharp focus on case work delivery had led to a culture where a neglectful approach to management was tolerated. A previous HMCPSI report had raised the issue of SFO cases being slow to progress. The SFO responded to the 2019 report by announcing a raft of measures to tackle the problems that had been highlighted. The years since the slow pace of investigations was reported on have seen the SFO closing a number of long-running investigations, as its Director Lisa Osofsky has made clear her intention to speed up the agency’s activities.
It now remains to be seen if the SFO can and will pull out all the stops to address the problems this most recent report has detailed. There may be some who regard the issues raised by HMCPSI as relatively minor in the big scheme of things. But the SFO is an organisation that relies on information gathering. Communication plays a large role in achieving that. A failure to communicate in a timely, organised and appropriate way with those it needs to be in touch with can only hamper its efforts to achieve the goals it sets itself.
Boston Scientific Corp has agreed to a $188.6 million settlement to resolve claims that it falsely marketed the safety of its surgical mesh products for women.
Several state attorneys general announced the settlement on Tuesday. The $188.6 million will be split between 47 states and the District of Columbia.
The mesh products at the heart of the false marketing accusations are designed to be implanted in women to treat common health conditions such as urinary incontinence and other conditions that can result from a weakening of the pelvic region due to childbirth, age and other factors.
According to the attorneys general, Boston Scientific failed to disclose the full range of irreversible complications, such as chronic pain and voiding dysfunction, that can result from implanting mesh. The company’s mesh products have been implanted in millions of women.
"Boston Scientific's deception caused women to suffer in deeply personal ways," Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a press release. "I hope this money will provide some measure of relief to the thousands of Washington women who live with the undisclosed side effects of these devices every day."
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In addition to the payment to the states and DC, Boston Scientific agreed to be subject to a number of marketing reforms. The company agreed to disclose the complications of implanting mesh in understandable terms in its marketing materials and refraining from representing the inherent risks of mesh as common to other types of treatment for the same conditions.
Boston Scientific will also be required to inform healthcare providers of the risk of significant complications resulting from their products’ use and disclose any potential conflicts of interest from sponsoring data or clinical studies regarding mesh that it publishes.
