Northern Ireland

Global law firm Herbert Smith Freehills has promoted Belfast office head Lisa McLaughlin to partner. Ms McLaughlin heads the firm's dedicated Alternative Legal Services (ALT) office and has overseen its expansion from 19 fee earners in 2011 to over 240 lawyers, technologists and legal analysts today

Legislation to provide private renters with additional protections during the coronavirus pandemic will not be retrospective to avoid any possible legal challenge, ministers have said. The Private Tenancies (Coronavirus Modifications) Bill 2020, which yesterday cleared the second stage in the Northe

Laura Banks, solicitor at Francis Hanna & Co, considers how human rights law can assist people experiencing a bereavement related to coronavirus. The COVID-19 pandemic has wide-reaching implications and it is therefore throwing up myriad issues in our society, some of them fundamental and going

Prominent Belfast solicitor Niall Murphy, who spent 16 days in an induced coma while battling coronavirus, has returned home after being treated for the illness. Mr Murphy, 43, is a partner at KRW LAW LLP and is known for his work as a criminal defence lawyer and in representing victims of state vio

A parole hearing is set to take place via video link for the first time in Northern Ireland. The Parole Commissioner of Northern Ireland had earlier issued guidance that all parole hearings at prisons and at Shannon Clinic would be postponed until further notice.

Proposals to use video "live link" technology for a range of custody functions, including police interviews and the extension of detention by both police and the courts, have gone out to consultation. The Department of Justice is seeking the views of key stakeholders and other interested parties reg

Belfast lawyer Lisa Boyd has been co-opted onto the executive committee of the Procurement Lawyers' Association (PLA). Ms Boyd, a director at Cleaver Fulton Rankin, will bring a Northern Ireland perspective to the leadership of the association, whose membership consists of procurement law experts fr

The UK has dropped to 35 out of 180 countries in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), in part due to a "worrying legal environment" for journalists in Northern Ireland. The international NGO said the UK's efforts to promote media freedom globally were unde

Lawyers involved in the controversial 2018 Belfast rape trial have launched defamation proceedings against former Ireland captain Rory Best. The lawyers acted for rugby player Paddy Jackson in the high-profile nine-week trial in which he and three others were found not guilty of raping a 19-yea

Litigation is set to be brought against the decision not to carry out mass testing for coronavirus in Northern Ireland care homes. Belfast firm KRW LAW LLP is acting on behalf of Keith Gray, whose mother is a resident in a care home in Castlewellan, Co Down.

Patrick Corrigan, Northern Ireland programme director at Amnesty International, argues against a return to "business as usual" after the coronavirus pandemic is over. Amid the rising death toll, the dangers faced by our front line workers and the wider dislocation for a society dealing with COVID-19

Police are preparing enforcement action for alleged licensing law breaches against a pub which has been delivering pints of Guinness during the lockdown. Belfast pub Hatfield House has been offering a "Guinness-on-wheels" service out of adapted vans, with plastic cups of the stout left on customers'

A six-and-a-half year prison sentence for a loyalist killer who became a "supergrass" after his arrest has been found unduly lenient by the Court of Appeal. However, UVF man Gary Haggarty will not return to prison as he was released and placed in a witness protection programme in May 2018, according

A criminal defence lawyer has acted remotely for a client in a police interview in a Northern Ireland first. A digital mechanism was put in place after Ciarán Kerr-Johnston, solicitor at Belfast-based Brentnall Legal Ltd, issued pre-action proceedings against the PSNI on behalf of a client wh

A same-sex couple who married in England but were treated as civil partners on their return to Northern Ireland were discriminated against, the Court of Appeal in Belfast has ruled. However, as with a similar judgment earlier this month, judges said there was no purpose to be served by making a decl