This Practice Note covers suggested immediate steps to undertake where your client is experiencing delay on an application or has received a refusal notice from the Home Office in relation to an immigration application. The same general principles apply to applications submitted in the UK and overseas, with some differences in possible approaches detailed below. Challenging decision-making delay Government departments can experience delays when making decisions. In general delay will only be open to challenge where it is either severe or it is having severe consequences for someone or both. What counts as delay will be specific to the particular case and type of application. It is usually easiest to challenge delay if there is good evidence that the delay is having an adverse impact. For example, a person waiting for a decision might provide medical evidence to show that the delay is having a negative impact on their mental health. It is possible to challenge delay with or without using litigation. It is usually helpful to try to resolve the matter outside of litigation,

STOP PRESS: The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 2 December 2025 and came into force on that day. Section 1 states that a thing (including a thing that is digital or electronic in nature) is not prevented from being the object of personal property rights merely because it is neither a thing in possession, nor a thing in action. This means that digital holdings including cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens and carbon credits can now be considered as personal property. See LNB: 04/12/2025 2. This Practice Note is being updated to reflect this change. What are digital assets? While there is currently no legal definition of ‘digital assets’, the Law Commission’s final report published on 28 June 2023 provides fundamental support to the emerging legal framework for digital assets under English law. See News Analysis: A new frontier for digital assets—key insights from the Law Commission Report. Digital assets include things like social media accounts (such as Facebook, Instagram or X), photographs stored in the cloud and on a computer, cryptocurrency

Practice Management analysis: In light of World Day for Safety and Health at Work 2019, we explore the best practice for employers who are dealing with an employee struggling with drug-misuse. Harriet Riddick, associate at CM Murray, discusses how an employer can reduce the impact on the workplace and the employee’s performance, while safeguarding themselves against charges of discrimination or health and safety offences.

This Practice Note considers the legal and practical issues that employers should consider when dealing with employees who are facing criminal charges, imprisonment or regulatory proceedings. Key principles Where an employee is charged with, or convicted of, a crime or a regulatory offence, it may be open for an employer to dismiss the employee for misconduct. For the purposes of an unfair dismissal claim, the dismissal of an employee for a reason which ‘relates to the conduct of the employee’ is a potentially fair reason for dismissal. It will be for the employer to prove that the dismissal was because of the criminal or regulatory misconduct in question. Fairness The burden of proof and the focus of an internal disciplinary process is very different to the focus of criminal proceedings. Criminal proceedings are concerned with guilt beyond reasonable doubt, whereas in a disciplinary process, when determining the facts as to whether or not the relevant conduct occurred, the standard of proof is generally the ‘balance of probabilities’. The same ‘balance of probabilities’

This Practice Note provides an understanding of how to deal with the constant pressure from clients to discount fees. It discusses some creative fee arrangements and looks at how solicitors can learn to negotiate fees with more confidence. Providing creative fee arrangements instead of greater discounts Perhaps the most important thing is to understand what a creative fee arrangement is; it is certainly not a bigger discount. A creative fee is one that is better for the client and also better for the solicitor. If the arrangement is one-sided, it is probably not sustainable in the long term. There has been considerable commentary in the legal press that clients do not like time-based fees as they can encourage inefficiency. While this is definitely true there are still certain types of matter where a client might choose a time-based fee as being appropriate and the most fair arrangement to both parties, eg where it is uncertain how much work will be required. When considering any alternative fee arrangement,

Dispute Resolution analysis: Mr Justice Leggatt has confirmed that summary judgment maybe sought when dealing with a dispute as to foreign law. The decision extends the principle dealing with disputes as to English law addressed in Easy Air, however, the courts will be cautious in allowing such an application. The application in this case revolved around the construction of art 97.2 of the Spanish Insolvency Act. While the questions raised remained unanswered, the judgment enforces the need to ensure that foreign law issues are addressed by expert evidence and that there is compliance with the relevant CPR provisions.

The SRA Standards and Regulations establish a model of practice: the freelance solicitor. This Practice Note explains the regulatory status of freelance solicitors. It also explains the difference between a sole practitioner and a freelance solicitor. It sets out the restrictions on practice applying to freelance solicitors together with requirements around holding client money and indemnity insurance. It also provides guidance for law firms and in-house lawyers on the risks of dealing with a freelance solicitor on the other side of a transaction or matter. What is a freelance solicitor? ‘Freelance solicitor’ is not a defined term in the SRA glossary. The SRA uses the term ‘freelance solicitor’ in a guidance note to describe a self-employed solicitor who is: • practising on their own, and does not employ anyone else in connection with the services they provide • practising in their own name (rather than under a trading name or through a service company) • engaged directly by clients with fees payable directly to them without that practice being authorised by the SRA. Although

Future copyright Although subject to certain qualifications (discussed in more detail in Practice Note: Copyright—subsistence and qualification), copyright automatically arises once the protected work is recorded, or ‘fixed’, in a permanent form such as in writing, on film or in a sound recording. Up until that point the work remains a ‘future work’ and is not protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA 1988). Where a work has not yet been recorded, but it is expected or anticipated, a prospective owner may deal with it as though it were already in existence. For example, they may assign or licence the future copyright in the future work, even though at the point of agreeing to do so the work in question does not exist. This Practice Note covers a number of considerations when dealing with future copyright works, and for more information on other aspects of copyright more generally, see Practice Notes: • Copyright―protectable works • Copyright—subsistence and qualification • Licensing intellectual property rights • Assigning intellectual property rights Prospective ownership and future copyright The

Goods are often left behind when a lease ends or a property is sold, especially following forfeiture by re-entry when there may have been no notice. The lease may deal with disposal of items but often there is often no specific provision that a landlord can rely on. This Practice Note describes when and how a landlord can dispose of goods left at the premises after a lease has ended, or after a property has been sold. It sets out the procedure under the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977 (T(IG)A 1977) for giving the tenant notice to collect the goods, failing which the landlord will be entitled to sell them. Ownership of goods and tenant fixtures The position differs significantly depending on whether the items are fixtures or chattels. For guidance on the distinction, see Practice Note: Fixtures and fittings. Subject to the terms of the lease, after the end of the term tenant’s fixtures revert to the landlord and a tenant has no right to remove

This Practice Note covers regulatory requirements relating to health and safety incidents including requirements relating to the reporting of injuries, diseases and other dangerous occurrences. It covers health and safety incident requirements in an office-based workplace. Other industry/workplace-specific requirements may apply in different working environments. For practical information about investigating, handling and reporting health and safety incidents, see Practice Note: How to manage health and safety incidents. Procedures The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, SI 1999/3242 require organisations with employees to: • establish and, where necessary, give effect to appropriate procedures which are to be followed in the event of serious and imminent danger to persons in the workplace • nominate a sufficient number of competent persons to implement any evacuation procedures • ensure that no employees have access to any area in the workplace to which it is considered necessary to restrict access on grounds of health and safety, unless the employee concerned has received adequate health and safety instruction Clear and relevant information on

For information on why the parties to a loan transaction might use hedging, see Practice Note: Use of derivatives to hedge against risk in a lending context. Parties The parties to the hedging arrangements will be: • the borrower, and • the hedging bank (often known as the hedging counterparty) The hedging bank will often be the lender, or in syndicated transactions, one of the lenders. However, the hedging bank will be acting in a different capacity to its role as lender and different teams at the bank will represent it in each capacity. For more information, see Practice Note: Use of derivatives in a lending context—documentation issues—Hedging bank and lending bank. Hedging documentation in loan transactions Some facility agreements include a clause setting out what is required in terms of hedging in a particular transaction (see, for example, clause 8.3 of the Loan Market Association (LMA) Single Currency Term Facility Agreement for Real Estate Finance Multiproperty Investment Transactions). Other facility agreements might not go into detail on hedging but

What is jury irregularity? An irregularity is any action which may prevent a juror or jury from remaining faithful to their oath or affirmation to 'faithfully try the defendant and to give a true verdict according to the evidence'. This includes anything which compromises the jury's independence or introduces extraneous considerations beyond the evidence. Other irregularities may arise out of attempts to intimidate or bully a juror. A jury’s creation of a WhatsApp group to arrange travel and lunch, which was not used to discuss the case, was found not to amount to an irregularity which required rectification. This was the case even where the trial judge asked the jurors about the use of the group and did not request to view the messages himself. The Court of Appeal held: ‘It is, in our view, unrealistic to suggest that jurors may do so by individual messages or phone calls, but not by some form of group messaging. To take an obvious example, a juror who had been absent from court through ill-health might well