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Professional Practice LinkedIn Warning & Tip for Family Lawyers – Browse Privately

September 14, 2014 Family Law

In my capacity as Operations Director at Moore Legal Technology I’ve been speaking to various family lawyers recently about all things online business. One discussion that came up recently was getting trainee/junior family law solicitors to do background research on the social media activities/profiles of partners of clients, particularly where it’s the partner of a […]

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Secret Courts: Ill Informed or Necessary?

November 21, 2012 Legal Know How

Guest post provided by John on behalf of BCL Legal. BCL Legal is specialist law recruiter who find and place law job candidates in the UK. Secret Courts: Ill Informed or Necessary? Closed civil court hearings are not a new phenomenon. However, they are currently in focus as controversial proposals for ‘closed material procedures’ progress […]

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Chrissie Lightfoot’s “The Naked Lawyer” eBook Review

June 25, 2012 Legal Know How

I recently read Chrissie Lightfoot’s “The Naked Lawyer”, RIP to XXX, How to Market, Brand and Sell YOU!, having met Chrissie a few times at legal networking events in London and having followed her on various social networks for the past couple of years. And I’m pleased to note that I found her book to […]

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Use of freelance paralegals is an emerging trend that is catching on fire

July 18, 2011 Law Practice

Use of free paralegals is an emerging trend that is catching on fire

Economic reasons: The economic reality of our times is causing more and more attorneys to rethink their expenses and restructure their practices accordingly, with one of the major changes being the use of a freelance, or contract paralegal, rather than a full-time employee. Many firms have ebb and flow business. Obviously, it is more cost-effective to pay for a paralegal’s services only when the work flow is too heavy for the attorney to handle on his/her own.

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Parenting Apart: Counselling, Mediation & Family Support

April 8, 2011 Family Law

Last Wednesday 30th March, I attended a Relationships Scotland event, hosted by HBJ Gateley Wareing in Glasgow and attended by family law professionals across Scotland. The event was of particular interest given the recent review of family law in England and Wales, one element of which concerns the fact that mediation for divorcing couples shall, as of 6 April 2011, be compulsory prior to them attending Court, subject to limited exceptions. For further information on this see a blog post by a family law firm in Liverpool. While mediation for divorcing couples is not yet compulsory in Scotland, it is becoming more widely available.

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Next Legal Tweetup in the UK: Vote Now!

March 24, 2011 Law Practice

Pursuant to the success of the #Lex2011Tweetup in London last week, it has been proposed among the UK’s legal twitterati elite that a second tweetup of a similar scale should take place later this year.

In that respect, it would be helpful if those who are wishing to attend could indicate their preference in the short survey below.

Best wishes and hope to see you later in the year.

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Tommy Sheridan Sentenced: Live Court Tweeting in Scotland

January 26, 2011 General Legal

Tommy Sheridan has been jailed for three years following his conviction in December of committing perjury during his News of the World defamation action. In sentencing Sheridan, Lord Bracadale said “By pursuing a defamation action against the News of the World, you brought the walls of the temple crashing down”

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Trainee Lawyer Tips: The Eleven Commandments

January 24, 2011 General Legal

In a former life I was a trainee solicitor at one of the biggest commercial law firms in Scotland. Below are eleven commandments which it would have been useful to follow from day one. If you have any queries, please contact me at gavin@wardblawg.com

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How to study law using mindmaps

December 20, 2010 Academia

There has been much written on the best ways to study law. From personal experience, it was difficult to get first class grades in law exams without utilising the tool of mindmaps. The man credited with the invention of the mindmap is Tony Buzan. The below information details personal experience of their use, not necessarily Tony’s experiences.

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How to Write a First Class Law Dissertation – Complete Guide

November 18, 2010 Academia

How to Write a First Class Law Dissertation – My honours law dissertation, top tips and a great video from an ex-Cambridge professor. Enjoy!

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How to write a first-class bibliography for a legal essay

November 9, 2010 Academia

How to write a bibliography to conclude your first-class dissertation There are three stages for completing an abundant and competent bibliography. First, go into the footnotes on your document, select all, copy and paste to the foot of your article, then separate into different categories. Then, second, go back through the materials which you have […]

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How to Conclude a First Class Law Dissertation

November 9, 2010 Academia

The conclusion to your dissertation is, arguably, the most important part and is, therefore, potentially a major differentiator between a first class dissertation and a second class one.

There are three things which you should bear in mind:-

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How to write a first class dissertation: Chapter 3: Creativity

November 4, 2010 Academia

Creative argument is essential if you’re going to get a first. Perhaps only unless your tutor or professor doesn’t know the topic well can you get away rehashing old argument and ideas that have been discussed thousands of times before.

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How to write a first class dissertation: Chapter 3: Fresh Perspective

November 3, 2010 Academia

Separating a dissertation into manageable chunks from the initial stages of structural planning gives you freedom to start afresh to write about a different but related topic once concluding another section. Access to a court, for instance, is a separate right from the right for a trial to be heard and decided within a reasonable time. It, thus, merits a separate chapter with its own introduction, subsections and conclusions.

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How to write a first class dissertation: Chapter 2: Concluding

November 2, 2010 Academia

A certain English teacher, Sandra MacCallum, at Kyle Academy once taught that, sometimes, “you’ve got to put your foot into the icy water”. Don’t be afraid to come to powerful conclusions.

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How to write a first class dissertation: Chapter 2: Developing the Debate

November 2, 2010 Academia

As noted in the previous post, one of the most important breakthroughs in writing your dissertation can come from spotting a gap where something has not yet been discussed. Once writing to fill that gap, it may be helpful to ask yourself what other angles there are to the debate. Or think about if the matter went to an official debate or, for law dissertations, to court. Think about creative arguments that an advocate might run and try to develop them yourself. Such development can lead to your getting a first rather than a 2:1.

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How to write a first class dissertation: Chapter 2: New Propositions

October 28, 2010 Academia

Another thing that truly separates a first class dissertation from a second class one is discussion of ideas and issues that have never before been discussed. The following is an example of such a proposition and discussion, all of which stemmed from one footnote in an academic article that said a certain proposition “had never been discussed before in the courts of the UK”. Finding this loophole was essential to the dissertation’s success.

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How to write a first class dissertation: Chapter 1: Set the scene

October 23, 2010 Human Rights

Chapter 1: Setting the scene Depending on the nature of your dissertation, you may need to set the scene further. In a legal dissertation, by “scene” is meant the bits of law that are relevant to set up key arguments in the main body of the dissertation. With this example dissertation, the target readership was, […]

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How to write a first class dissertation: Foreword

October 21, 2010 Academia

Centred on a narrow topic of international private law and human rights, this dissertation received a first class honours award from the University of Glasgow in 2007 under Dr Janeen Carruthers and Professor Elizabeth Crawford, and was verified externally by Professor Richard Fentiman of Cambridge University.

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Why do universities not publish student-generated content online for free?

October 14, 2010 IP & Technology Law

Each year across the world, each university demands that its students submit essays and dissertations electronically. But very little of that work is published online for the world to read. If it was so published, the knowledge contained within would be shared with billions of people around the planet. It follows that students would gain greater incentive to make their work of better quality. So, why not publish worldwide? Below are outlined the current trends towards emphasis on virtual learning and information dissemination through social media, followed by suggested reasons for universities not publishing students’ work more for free, concluding with a recommended course of action for all universities throughout the world to consider.

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Gavin Ward’s WardblawG Update on YouTube

October 4, 2010 General Legal

Gavin Ward of WardblawG giving a presentation on YouTube regarding recent updates to the site.

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Please Subscribe?: Oversubscription of the Practice of Law

September 24, 2010 Employment

Tuesday marked the inception of the new Diploma in Legal Practice at University of Glasgow, separate from the Glasgow Graduate School of Law as it was 10 years ago, but now led b y former head of the Law Society of Scotland, Douglas Mill. And what better to mark the occasion than a series of exquisite speeches from some of Scotland’s best, including Sheriff Principal James Taylor, Lord Wallace and Lord Tyre.

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How to Dominate the Internet: Book One: Protect Your Brand: Chapter 9 of 10: Further Reading

August 30, 2010 Corporate and Commercial

So that’s a brief introductory guide to protecting your IP online. To learn more about IP law and IP protection, I would recommend strongly that you visit WardblawG’s friends at the award winning IP blog, the IPKat, founded and managed by Professor Jeremy Phillips. Subscription to Jeremy’s Google groups will provide your inbox with a flurry of IP related email gems every day plus pictures of one or two cats in peculiar poses. WardblawG’s Gavin Ward’s cat or, as Jeremy puts it, owner Missy has already made one appearance on Wednesday Whimsies.

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