Lawyers who specialise in libel actions against media companies have launched a legal counter-attack against the government in the growing battle over English defamation rules.

CRIMINAL defence lawyers have for months been warning of the dire consequences to their firms – and the wider legal profession – of controversial changes to legal aid.

There has been a "massive reduction" in the number of legal firms prepared to take on poorer clients because of increased red tape and cuts in lawyers' payments, as the government curbs legal-aid spending. The Legal Aid Practitioners Group (LAPG) estimates that more than half of the 11,000 lawyers' offices willing to take on legal aid work less than a decade ago have either closed down o...

Political Scrapbook this weekend has an open letter from Alistair Webster, the chair of the Liberal Democrat Lawyers Association, attacking plans for legal aid: If the true aim is to leave a skeleton and third rate public legal system, the government should make that clear and we can judge it accordingly … I, for one,

Did you see that lawyers are earning £800 an hour from the National Health Service and taking “indefensible” fees of tens of millions of pounds in legal disputes. The money is coming from a government scheme intended to compensate patients for medical blunders and inadequate care, an investigation has found. The compensation lawyers are claiming costs and “success fees&...

In-house lawyers do not enjoy the same legal privilege as external lawyers, according to a preliminary opinion in a test case at Europe's highest court

THE legal sector has shown great resilience in tough times - and Scotland is increasingly becoming a nation of specialist lawyers.

In yet another shocking example of how the least well-off in our society are now the Government's lowest priority, new Tory legal aid minister Jonathan Djanogly has scrapped the legal aid training/a> contract grant scheme. Legal aid lawyers are really the only profesionally qualified people who can actually help those in desperate need for legal advice.

Libel lawyers will have their success fees cut by 90 per cent under a Government ruling which has been hailed as a victory for press freedom.

It's not just older lawyers who are suffering during the recession:DOZENS of young lawyers are being cast adrift at the end of their training contracts, The Scotsman can reveal.As the recession bites into some of Scotland's biggest law firms, one legal recruitment agency has reported a threefold rise in the number of newly qualified solicitors on its books.The truth is that these youngsters are