21st Century Court Reporting

Reports that legal history had been made by a judge allowing the use of Twitter in open court for an extradition hearing in London sparked a few earth-shattering predictions. Was this the end of court reporting as we know it? Could this be ‘possibly the final nail in the coffin of shorthand’? Will court hearings soon be televised? …

The Sentencing Con Trick

If a man receives an eight year sentence for robbery, how much time does he actually serve behind bars? It’s not eight years, for a start. It might not even be four years, although most criminals are told they will serve half their sentences before being released on licence. Some are released even earlier on …

Murder Law

Reading the recent stories about plans to introduce US-style murder charges to the UK, it seems very few people understand how our system works. It began with Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, joining calls for the offence to be split into first and second degree murder – first degree for intentional killing and second degree …

‘One Punch Manslaughters’

It seems like a rare event, a freak occurrence – an innocent person is hit with a single punch and falls back on to the pavement, striking their head hard on the ground. Tragically they suffer a fractured skull and brain damage and die within a few days despite advanced medical treatment. That is exactly …