Understand Your Rights. Solve Your Legal Problems
Not that long ago, if you’d said that people or businesses could raise money by asking some strangers on the internet you would likely have been met with incredulous looks. Yet crowdfunding is a massive area of growth and alternative forms of finance are threatening traditional banking in ways that one once would have thought impossible. Emily Mackay, CEO of data intelligence firm Crowdsurfer, tells Lawyer Monthly all about crowdfunding and how it could potentially contribute to increased access to justice.
The UK crowdfunding market is currently more buoyant in 2017 than any time previously. According to our own data analysis, the average raised, across all attempts that ended within 2016 was £10,858. The same measure for those that ended before 27th April 2017 is £20,734. Remarkable growth, particularly amidst so much societal, financial and political uncertainty.
So the power of the crowd is clear to see, and it’s no surprise that other sectors have realised its potential. One of these sectors is the law, and one of the leading proponents of this is CrowdJustice. But how successful can crowdfunding for legal services be? Will it improve access to justice or does it still depend on who has the ways and means to effectively raise money?
Gaining access to justice
Access to justice is a cornerstone of democracy, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But for some in the UK – those that lack the ability to pay for it - this access is under threat. In 2013 the then coalition Government slashed the budget for legal aid by £350m a year. This meant that certain types of case – such as divorce, child contact, welfare benefits, employment, clinical negligence, and most housing law – were no longer eligible for public funds.
A recent Ministry of Justice (MoJ) consultation revealed plans for further cuts. During 2015/16 a total £341m was paid out under the litigator graduated fee scheme, but the MoJ plans to cut expenditure to around £292m, a return to 2013/14 levels.
When you also factor in 2016’s increase in civil court fees – a hike of 620%, one of the biggest increases ever – the picture becomes clear that justice can depend on your ability to pay for it. At the time of the hike, the lord chief justice, Lord Thomas stated, ‘justice has become increasingly unaffordable to most’.
CrowdJustice – putting power back in the hands of the people
To overcome this problem, CrowdJustice was founded in 2015 by lawyer Julia Stalisky, with the intention of making the law available to everyone. Following success in the UK – famously with campaigns focused upon the Chilcot Enquiry and Brexit – the platform has also launched in the US earlier in 2017.
CrowdJustice is simple in how it operates. Once you have a lawyer, you submit your case to the CrowdJustice site. If your submission is successful, you are then invited to build a page to attract donations. When you reach your target, funds transfer to your lawyer.
If a case does not reach its target, then donors’ credit cards are not charged. And if a funded claimant doesn’t use all of the money donated, anyone who has donated more than £1,000 can request a refund. If not, any surplus goes to charity.
A CrowdJustice campaign is very similar to any crowdfunding campaign. This isn’t a surprise when you consider both crowdfunding for business and for justice have the same intention: to fix society’s inefficiencies by democratising access to capital.
Does justice depend on the campaign brand?
But do good intentions mean that justice can become fairer? Crowdfunding undoubtedly increases access to finance, but to an extent it does depend on the power and reach of a brand. When seeking to attract investment, a business must promote its to potential investors and outline why such individuals should support their venture.
Although the CrowdJustice model is seeking donations and not investment, the principle remains the same. So if someone in dire need of legal services cannot put together a campaign to successfully attract donors, in terms of either having those skills themselves or the ability to pay someone to run the campaign for them, will they remain in need of justice?
Furthermore, due to the unglamorous nature of many litigation claims, there may be a large number of failed campaigns, with cases that don’t capture the public imagination remaining un-funded. Are these campaigns any less noble or necessary just because they aren’t remarkable or sexy? Of course not. But the democratic crowd – who vote with their wallets – might deem many worthy campaigns ‘unworthy’ of requiring help.
But CrowdJustice is only two years old and has achieved a number of notable successes in that time, bringing justice to those that otherwise would have struggled to find it. It deserves more time to test and iterate. At this stage it is not perfect, but the fact it exists is remarkable for the people it is already beginning to help.
Crowdfunding has developed in a myriad of ways in the past decade, but its biggest influence could be in providing legal services for those that need it most. Crowdfunding for justice is important, tangible, and, by handing the power back to the people, potentially revolutionary.
When it comes to regulatory law, rules and proposals for new ones, every lawyer, business and often individuals need to keep up to date. Here Clive Rich, lawyer and chairman of online legal service provider LawBite, gives Lawyer Monthly a rundown of the latest important changes every small or medium enterprise needs to keep an eye out for, and potentially take action on or risk being fined.
Everyone is talking about changes to the Data Protection Act with GDPR being introduced in 2018, so most of the UK’s small to medium enterprises (SMEs) should already be aware of how this might affect their day-to-day business. There are lots of sources of information outlining what SMEs need to know and much of the key information can be found here if needed.
However, it’s not all just about data protection (as important as those upcoming changes are). There are other key areas of new and upcoming regulation that SMEs need to be aware of and we’ve pulled together a ‘Top 5 need to know’ list to help raise awareness and mitigate any future issues for smaller business owners.
Minimum wage increases are particularly important for smaller business owners as they may be applicable to their staff more often (whether they are employees or contractors), particularly compared to larger businesses and organisations. In April 2017 the rate of the national minimum wage increased, despite an increase in most rates on 1st October 2016 - another detail SMEs should be particularly aware of. This was so that the timing of the annual increase in the national living wage rate for workers aged 25 or over can align with the other national minimum wage rates. The rate for workers aged 25 and over (the national living wage) increased from £7.20 to £7.50. The rates within the other age bands also increase. It’s important to be aware of these changes across the bands so you’re paying staff fairly and within regulatory parameters.
For businesses that have either offered apprenticeships or are looking to do so, you need to be aware of the apprenticeship levy to fund apprenticeship training which came into effect in April 2017. However it’s important to know that different rules apply depending on the size of a business’s paybill. Employers with a paybill of more than £3 million will pay the monthly levy via PAYE. These employers (in England) will be able to access funding through a digital service, a new system which began operating in May of this year. Most importantly for most smaller business owners, employers that do not pay the levy will also be able to access funding for apprenticeships. It’s also good to be aware that although the levy applies across the UK, apprenticeships are a devolved policy which means that authorities in each of the UK nations manage their own apprenticeship programmes including how funding is spent on apprenticeship training. So if you’re an employer with operations in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, you may want to contact your apprenticeship authority for more specific information.
If you’re thinking of hiring someone from overseas (or rather, from outside the EU), you need to consider this third legislative change that has been in place since April 2017 and affects the cost of hiring. From now on, Tier 2 visa applications will include a mandatory £1,000 fee for medium and large businesses per sponsored employee for every year of sponsorship. However, for smaller businesses as well as educational, charitable and other institutions of a similar nature, a concession will be granted. This concession reduces the Immigration Skills Charge to £364, which is more manageable but still an additional cost for a small business that will have to be weighed up. The new Immigration Skills Charge has been introduced to ‘incentivise training of British workers’, so you might want to look within your own team first before paying out additional fees for migrant workers.
The world of employment law changes rapidly and it’s often a challenge for businesses to keep up. For SMEs this poses a particular challenge, as any increase in bills having to be paid is another expense that needs to be taken into account. So, here’s what you need to know so you can plan and budget accordingly: as of April 2017, statutory maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental pay will increase to £140.98 per week. Also, the weekly rate of statutory sick pay has now risen to £89.35.
And finally, as you may or may not know, if you make an employee who has had two years’ or more service redundant you must pay them an amount based on that employee’s weekly pay, length of service and age. Currently, there is a maximum amount you have to pay here. The key part about this change is that from April 2017 this maximum has been increased from £479 to £489. Although it is a relatively small change, when thinking about making an employee redundant you should still bear this in mind in terms of the cost of doing so.
It’s important to remember this list is not exhaustive and there are changes afoot all the time, so you should always keep abreast of changes. If you’re confused as to whether or not something applies to you and your business, we’d always recommend you speak to your legal adviser.
Following yesterday's Court of Appeal judgment in relation to Sharp v Sharp, ruling in Julie Sharp's favour, Mr Sharp has been awarded £2 million in total, less than the initial £2.74 million awarded in 2015 but more than Mrs Sharp's request of only £1.2 million.
This judgement follows several years of divorce proceedings between the couple, where the wife, a City energy trader earning £10.5 million in bonuses in five years, finally found out her husband was cheating during the initial divorce proceedings in 2015.
At the time, the husband was awarded £2.725 million, which equated to half of the £5.45 million matrimonial assets available to the couple. Yesterday however, the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the wife as Lord Justice McFarlane decided to agree with Mrs Sharp’s claims that her husband’s original payout decision was 'intrinsically unfair' in light of her overwhelming input to the family wealth.
Evidence brought to the appeal also suggested assets during the marriage, eanrings and payments were made separate, with either sides earning unmingled. This left the judge to conclude that “there was never a joint approach to funds in this marriage.”
According to the Daily Mail, the judge concluded: “Short marriage, no children, dual incomes and separate finances are sufficient to justify a departure from the equal sharing principle in order to achieve fairness between these parties.”
This sets the case apart from the usual 50/50 marital divorce split of assets, given the term of the marriage, for only four years and childless, and the husband was found guilty of a clandestine affair.
Graeme Fraser, Partner at Hunters Solicitors, told Lawyer Monthly: "This Judgment further opens up the Court's discretion regarding the length of the marriage, particularly if the couple have no children, both are in full time employment and keep at least a proportion of their finances separate. Increasingly, couples will live together before they get married or enter into civil partnerships, and this has resulted in effectively increasing the length of the marriage when the Court exercises its discretion about how much to award each spouse.
"The courts may expect more arguments about when a couple have started to cohabit in future cases following Mrs Sharp’s success. This is particularly relevant for same sex couples, for many of whom same sex marriage and civil partnership was not available until the relatively recent introduction of legislation.
"The Courts will not apply an automatic or blind application of 50/50 in every case as all the circumstances of the case must be considered."
(Photo credit: Nev Ayling & Richard Gittins)
According to several news outlets, an alleged ‘Jihadi terrorist’, who is currently fighting deportation form the UK, has been awarded £250,000 in legal aid handouts despite being found with instruction manuals on bombing nightclubs and airports. The question is, under the law, is it just to provide him with legal aid?
The Sun claims he reportedly came to the UK as a ‘sleeper agent’ following 9/11, pretending to have fled Jordan for fear of his life. His asylum claim was dismissed but he evaded the authorities by using a fake name.
He was also allegedly given a council house, £100,000 in benefits and was only caught once tipped to the police for unusual bank activity. After finding incriminating evidence of manuals to bomb airports and nightclubs, he was sentenced to imprisonment by Manchester Crown Court, after which he served several years.
Now on the verge of being tossed out of the country, he is fighting to remain, claiming human rights law as his advocate. This comes just as Theresa May is looking to scrap the human rights act and make way with deporting extremists.
From a legal standpoint Tory MP Philip Davies said: “It’s bad enough that we are finding it difficult to kick out somebody who may do us terrible harm, but it’s an absolute kick in the teeth to be forking out such colossal sums for his legal bills.”
The Daily mail says he has been given £253,000 in taxpayer-funded legal aid money since battling his deportation.
The current legal situation here is that if he were to be named, this would put him in danger in his home country, given his past actions and consequences in the UK, which in turn would sabotage the prospect of deportation in itself as he would have to receive asylum under human rights law. The elimination of such law would allow him to be deported regardless of the danger, if found to be a considerable danger to the UK as a terror suspect.
According to the individual’s lawyer Daniel Furner, of Birnberg Peirce: "The bulk of our costs related to demonstrating that the Home Office had been wrong to say my client would not be tortured on return to Jordan. The Home Office now accepts we were right about that."
Announced this week, UK PM Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron are set to unveil proposals that would fine big companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google for failing to remove extremist content form their sites.
This comes following a series of attacks on both France, the UK and other European nations.
According to May, these large firms have a “social responsibility,” to remove the “poisonous propaganda that is warping young minds.”
The government leaders are sick of the firms’ so called ‘foot dragging’ and want to hold them liable for the failure of preventing the spreading of such extremist propaganda material. The liability would result in large fines that would eventually put pressure on the issues at hand.
The actual figures of the fines are not yet known, but according to the Daily Mail, Germany is already issuing fines of around £45 million, after failure to take action against extremist material within just 24 hours.
“The UK and France will work together to encourage corporations to do more and abide by their social responsibility to step up their efforts to remove harmful content from their networks, including exploring the possibility of creating a new legal liability for tech companies if they fail to remove unacceptable content.
“We are united in our total condemnation of terrorism and our commitment to stamp out this evil,” said May. Further talks on the proposals will be held this week by Home Secretary Amber Rudd and French interior minister Gerard Collomb.
As part of Lawyer Monthly’s new series on law school, recruitment and careers in the legal sector, John Oxley, Barrister at Vardags relays an educational piece below on the journey from paralegal to managing partner, and everything in between.
Lawyers often have little idea what those above and below them in their firm actually do. Yet from paralegal to managing partner is a complex path, with each layer shouldering very different responsibilities.
As a paralegal and junior lawyer, your life is almost entirely dominated with fee-earning work, with some additional admin at the sides. Your priority is hitting targets and ensuring that your cases run smoothly, without much concern for the wider progression of the firm. As a partner or managing partner, you will be providing complex, high-level legal advice, but this will often be just a small part of your day. With seniority, one is much more likely to be concerned with the health of the firm and how work is generated. Even at large firms, where accounts, HR and marketing are vast, autonomous departments, leading partners should be acutely aware of what is going on across the business.
For many lawyers, this means a change from what they trained for and are good at – the law – to a range of new skills in business. Concerns about firm-wide utilisation, client generation and fees recovery are generally not the worries of junior fee earners, but should demand a lot of time from those on the higher rungs of the career ladder. A partner or managing partner, you has to think not only about what needs to be done by the end of the day, but also where the firm is set to be in five or ten years’ time. Some very well regarded firms have imploded and collapsed as a result of failing to stay on top of business basics such as cash flow and debt.
With this comes responsibility for the case work of everyone around them. Paralegals, trainees and NQs will largely be only concerned about their own performance – making sure deadlines are hit and their work is satisfactory. A lead fee earner or partner will have this worry for their whole team, ensuring the entire caseload remains on track and that everyone is pulling their weight and properly engaged.
The senior lawyer has to be a manager of people too – and brilliance at the law is no guarantee of management capabilities. Lawyers who reach the top generally do so because of their own ability and motivation, yet suddenly find themselves motivating and managing others. In this position the lawyer is challenged to become a leader. One has to find a way to inspire a team to pull together, and to get along, coping with all the personality clashes and personal issues which can come up from time to time. This people management can be one of the things lawyers find hardest, yet it is essential when in a position of seniority. It is vital to learn how to motivate the team when the odds are stacked and morale is slipping.
Trust in the team goes hand in hand with this. Lower down the legal ladder, there is an easy way to ensure things are done and done properly – to do them yourself. As a partner, or managing partner, this is no longer possible. There simply is not time to micromanage every aspect of a case, and to do so would impose unreasonable fees on the client. Senior fee earners have to learn what and how to delegate in a way that maintains quality and ensures that everything is done by the deadline and to the highest possible standard.
At the top of the legal ladder, one is likely to have far more freedom than at the bottom, though this can be a double-edged sword. Rather than simply following the instructions of a more senior lawyer, as is the paralegal’s lot, a firm leader has to prioritise and manage a wide-range of case and business objectives. This does mean more freedom in how to tackle and timescale problems, but equally means the pressure of fitting it all in.
The daily lives of managing partners and paralegals are hugely different. As part of the management team, the days of bundling and engrossing are over, replaced by providing high level advice and case strategy, whilst also managing your team and various aspects of the business.
There are, of course, some constants. For lawyers of every level there is the pressure of having to get things done well and on time, whether that is for a client, or for the firm. Dedication and intelligence is required from all levels of a law firm, even if new promotions mean new challenges and new skills being necessary. The challenge as an ambitious lawyer is how to manage your own performance to make the most of those changes.
The Free University of Brussels (ULB) was accused of being sexist after it asked its female students to wear low-cut dresses for graduation day. It was later forced to apologise.
An email sent round to all medical students informed that makes could wear suits, but women were told: “From an aesthetic point of view it is better for young women to wear a dress or skirt, and a nice revealing neckline.
“Of course, ladies, this advice is not obligatory,” the email added.
The scandal was revealed following the above email that circulated a student’s Facebook page. The response has not been welcoming. “No one has the right to tell you how you should feel in your skin.
“No one has the right to tell you how you dress. Nobody has the right to tell you how to play your role as a woman,” one person wrote, according to the Huffington Post.
Enrique Garcia, employment law consultant for the ELAS Group, on the matter told Lawyer Monthly:
“Whilst dress codes can be gender specific, they should hold equivalence in terms of their smartness, for example, a uniform may require that a man wears a tie whilst a female’s uniform may have a neck scarf or open neck blouse. This is because an open neck blouse is still considered smart on a woman but an open neck on a man may be considered casual. Men and women can be asked to wear different things and it is not unlawful to ask men and women to wear different things as long as that level of equivalence is maintained.
“With that being said, asking a woman to wear something revealing is completely unacceptable and outdated. There are very, very few exceptions that may apply to this rule e.g. models, actresses during specific projects, works etc. Asking women to wear a revealing outfit, especially for aesthetic reasons, during a graduation ceremony is jaw-dropping. These ladies are celebrating their academic achievements – academia is more than aesthetics and a person’s appearance should be the last thing on their minds. Similarly, such a dress code in the workplace will almost certainly be considered discriminatory. It will be a very brave employer who argues that this is reasonable and they will have a steep uphill climb in doing so.
“It is unsurprising that the University has apologised. The further suggestion that the writer of the dress code was a woman would hold little sway in any tribunal - it is not a defence to discrimination that you hold the same protected characteristic as a complainant. Holding a particular protected characteristic does not entitle anyone, least of all an employer, from treating those with the same protected characteristic less favourably than they treat or would treat others without that protected characteristic.”
Clayton Williams, Consultant at Cardiff and London based law firm, Capital Law, had this to say to Lawyer Monthly: “When a Belgian university invited its female graduates to wear a ‘skirt and a nice revealing neckline’ at their graduation ceremony, you might have thought it was a line from an episode of Poirot set in 1920. Given Belgium is the largest producer of comics globally, it was surely lifted from a 1950’s strip?
Alas, there is no such explanation and in a country which recognises three official languages, produced the first newspaper in history and leads the world on gay rights – it makes the degrading objectification of women more surprising.
“What offends most is the clause that generously allows women an opt out to choose their own attire. It beggars belief.
It would be unfair to single out sexists in one country. Women being belittled or threatened with disciplinary proceedings for refusing to wear sexist clothing at work is as common in London as it is in Liege; Antwerp as it is in Andover.
“Stories abound about women being advised to wear more revealing clothing in an attempt to attract male customers; to bleach hair blonde and in the case of Nicola Thorp, being sent home for refusing to wear high heels.
“At a time where the cost of redress, via an employment tribunal, remains prohibitively expensive for individuals subjected to gender and sexual discrimination, we look to institutions such as universities to stamp out all such antiquated behaviour.
“Belgium has had the highest number of women parliamentarian ministers in the world and first elected a women MP in 1921. Such statistics are the real markers of a decent and progressive society. Now that really is worth a headline.”
Next up on the celebrity internet nudity line-up are TV stars from Coronation Street, Sally Lindsay and Catherine Tyldesley, as well as Melanie Sykes, TV and radio presenter.
These celebs are feared to have had their iCloud accounts hacked, as photos and videos, including several explicit snaps and clips, have been leaked to X-rated sites.
In 2017, 2016 and beyond, celebrities, many world famous, who have had their private images and videos leaked have been Sienna Miller, Miley Cyrus, Amanda Seyfried, Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst, Kaley Cuoco, Scarlett Johansson, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, and many more.
Claire Stead at online safety company Smoothwall told Lawyer Monthly: “The harsh truth is, no matter who you are – whether a qualified accountant, a local government or a NHS trust – you’re likely to be a target for hackers in some form or another. In this case, it is celebrities who have been targeted, with hackers releasing private photos of themselves to an ‘X-rated’ website. While this won’t rile many like it did with the NHS hack a few weeks ago, it proves that threat actors are intent on causing chaos and distress wherever they can, often without any financial incentive to do so.
“The photos seem to have come about as a result of a hack on the celebrities’ iClouds, a cloud service that has been targeted before but can be bolstered by extra protection: two-factor authentication so you receive a notification when you access a device for the first time, changing your password regularly, using a password manager and checking your logged in devices.
“Once a photo is released on the public domain by someone other than yourself, it can prove extremely difficult to get it taken down again. By taking preventative action now, people can protect themselves from the advances of hackers’ intent on doing them harm. Similarly, businesses and organisations should also be taking measures to prevent any unwanted cyberattacks on their systems, should it compromise their customer data. Companies must have a multi-layered security defence which spans encryption, firewalls, web filtering and ongoing threat monitoring as well as a proactive stance.”
China's new Cybersecurity Law goes into force on Thursday with an aim to tighten what is already one of the world's most restrictive online environments.
With more on this and other news around the world we turn to Ro Aram.
Aram… the law seeks to protect China's networks and private user data, but foreign firms are concerned about its potential impact on their ability to do business in the world's second largest economy....
That's right Jihye… companies have been urging the Chinese government to delay the legislation's implementation, but these calls have fallen on deaf ears.
To add to concerns, the language of the new law, which was adopted last November, was tweaked recently to broaden the scope of those affected by it.
Multinationals are worried it may discriminate against foreign businesses and that its requirements on matters such as technology disclosure and encryption could give Chinese companies an unfair advantage.
Data collected within China will have to stay inside the country, raising suspicions that Beijing could steal trade secrets or intellectual property from foreign companies doing business there.
They are also concerned about the vagueness of the legislation as those subject to the restriction of data transfer outside of China's borders have now been classified as "network operators" which could mean any business regardless of size.
They want more clarification on what businesses will be affected and to what extent, hence the calls for a delay.
Although some have praised the new law's implementation, especially amid recent fears over the global WannaCry ransomware attack, companies are jittery about their products having to go through even tougher security checks, which could lead to some being banned from the country.
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Gabriela O. Asrow of Hoffenberg & Block, LLC discusses the six types of difficult family law clients and how to work with them.
