New year, new procedures! On 1 January 2026, a new two-year pilot-scheme comes into play in the High Court. In legal talk, it’s known as “Practice Direction 51ZH – Access to Public Domain Documents” and it will initially operate in only a few (pilot) courts. In summary, both parties and non-parties to a case will be able to more easily [...]
Noel Clarke vs The Guardian: Key legal lessons The libel case of Noel Clarke -v- The Guardian has sparked widespread discussion about the boundaries of truth, and investigative journalism and the public interest defence, in the context of defamation. This article sets out the chronology of the proceedings and explores the key legal and media lessons from Mr Clarke’s failed [...]
Shared Appreciation, Unshared Burden: The Ethical Failure of Bank of Scotland and Barclays Bank For nearly three decades, a large group of mostly elderly and vulnerable mortgage holders have endured the consequences of a financial product that promised security but delivered profound hardship. The Shared Appreciation Mortgage (SAM), sold in the late 1990s primarily by Bank of Scotland (now part [...]
Garfield.law & the ‘Robot Solicitor’ Sensation In May 2025, legal headlines across the UK proclaimed the arrival of the country’s “first robot solicitor” - a legal AI tool named Garfield.law. Described in the media as a revolutionary step toward automated justice, the reality was more modest: Garfield is a procedural software system with AI capability designed to help individuals pursue [...]
Moths and Replies to Enquiries – A Salutary Lesson Iya Patarkatsishvili (1) Yevhen Hunyak v William Woodward – Fisher [2025] EWHC 265 (Ch) The judgment of Mr Justice Fancourt sitting in the High Court of Justice on 10 February 2025 is an interesting one and provides a reminder to take care when answering enquiries as a seller. In this case [...]
Declaratory Judgments. YOU SHALL, NOT, MERGE! The common law doctrine of merger in judgment does not apply to declaratory judgments. So confirmed the UK Supreme Court when today it handed down its judgment in Nasir v Zavarco Plc [2025] UKSC 5. Lee Donoghue, Jessica Verrall, and Rabia Azam at Teacher Stern LLP acted for the Appellant Tan Sri Nasir, with [...]
The age of legal reform in the property sector – is the 1954 Act next? On the 19th November 2024, the Law Commission published its Consultation Paper (the “Paper”), which concerns Part 2 of the landlord and tenant Act 1954 (or as it is well known : “the 54 Act”). The Law Commission considers, for a variety of reasons, that [...]
What does a ‘good arguable case’ mean in the context of a freezing injunction? In the recent case of dos Santos -v- Unitel SA, [1] the Court of Appeal clarified this key threshold test for obtaining a freezing injunction. What are freezing injunctions? A freezing injunction[2] is a discretionary remedy which prevents the respondent from disposing of or dealing with [...]
Barclays have set up a training contract where participants will spend half their time at TLT or Simmons & Simmons (i.e. in private practice) and the other half in house at Barclays. At the end of the training contract, trainees can apply for nq positions at any of the three organisations. This course, along with the SQE, is another way [...]
Once hailed as “one of the most innovative developments” in the home loan market and “the bedrock of financial planning for millions”, the Shared Appreciation Mortgage which was offered to consumers by the Bank of Scotland (now part of the Lloyds Banking Group) and Barclays Bank in the 90s, soon revealed itself as a grossly unfair product with bitter consequences [...]
