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Direct access Barrister | Criminal, Motoring & Regulatory Law
Pioneers, Stolen Lethal Injection Drugs & Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning
I'm sure when Jon Bruning approved this video, he was hoping it would portray him as a real Nebraskan - one of ours - standing on the shoulders of pioneers. Instead, it reminds me of Willa Cather's 1923 essay, "Nebraska, The End of the First Cycle": In Nebraska, as in...
Enforcement of County Court Judgments & Employment Tribunal Orders
Several litigants in person have come to me recently about enforcing their county court and tribunal money judgments. They won their cases a few years ago, but the other side haven't paid. Is getting judgment debtors to pay what they owe normally a problem? The short...
How To Brief A Barrister
I'll start with how not to brief a barrister. My friend J decided to start a claim against his neighbour. He was a litigant in person - but told me that he had a barrister "on hand" who was guiding him. J told me the barrister represented him at a pre-trial hearing,...
Criminal Law Recognition Of Stalking As Gender Based Violence: At Last
When a friend of mine was being stalked in the late 90s, we were all in a bit of denial. Only when it finally dawned on us that the post-breakup "bump intos", pebbles thrown against her window and countless letters and flowers had escalated to screaming threats to...
Geeklawyer, Article 8 & The Bar Standards Board: What The BSB Can Learn From Ken Livingstone
In case you haven't read it, Charon QC kicked off an interesting discussion about the Bar Standards Board's censure of David Harris for some things he published as @geeklawyer by way of his protected Twitter account. The BSB called it, "engaging in conduct which was...
I Don’t Need a Lawyer Because I Haven’t Done Anything Wrong
Usually Police hear this one from people who've just been charged. I usually hear it from people in the early stages of a legal dispute regarding accusations their employer's just made about them - or people who are being pursued by someone who says they owe them...
My First FOI Request
As I've only made the one Freedom of Information Act request, I certainly don't hold myself out to be any sort of expert. I didn't "win" - and it was always going to be a mountain to climb getting the Information Commissioner (decision here) and the First Tier...
The Cycling QC & the Hounslow Killing Zone Incident
It seems like it was just the other day we had to lay down the law for light jumping cyclists. Today, and with a big H/T to Messrs Legal Cheek, we're able to see the flip-side of the same old coin - motorists who don't think cyclists have equal protection under the...
Lawyers & Other Charlatans
Friends, this is a funny old jurisdiction. Anybody can call themselves a "lawyer". You don't have to have one day's worth of legal training to be a "lawyer", "will-writer" or "professional McKenzie Friend" - and yet these people are happy to take your money to give...
The Curious Incident of the Edgware Road Cyclist
While I make no comment on the Danny Shine and PC Stout matter, as the video has been taken down, I thought it might be a useful moment to make some general comments on cycling, red lights, police powers and the law. Jumping red lights is an offence. Even for cyclists...