This week's edition of Dispute Resolution weekly highlights includes: analysis of key DR developments and judicial decisions including the UK Supreme Court welcoming Law students from leading universities to a panel event on ‘Why Trust Matters: Public confidence in the rule of law in an age of AI and populism' and the Court of Appeal decision in Smithstone v Tranmoor Primary School (costs and Part 36 offers).

The extent of the restrictions imposed by regulators or government will largely dictate the nature of the risks that you need to manage for your organisation during any pandemic. Such restrictions could be ‘light touch’ or, as with COVID-19, a strict approach involving the forced closure of many businesses, restrictions on travel and extreme social distancing measures. This risk management guide anticipates a strict approach is taken. Therefore, you may need to adapt the measures suggested according to the circumstances in which your organisation finds itself. Additionally, this risk management guide does not cover the exacting requirements that may be imposed by regulators in respect of PLCs, financial organisations, competition law, advertising, consumer credit etc, or by specialist areas of legislation such as employment, taxation, insolvency or corporate law. Regulation concerning the public sector together with corporate accounting and finance also fall outside the scope of this risk management guide. Why you need to manage this risk The biggest issue for all businesses when faced with the risk of a pandemic must be how to avoid going

This week's edition of Construction weekly highlights includes a revised British Standards Institution (BSI) code of practice on fire risk appraisals of external walls (FRAEWs), updated Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) guidance on second stairs and evacuation lifts, a Welsh Government update on building safety, remediation and interim alarm measures, News Analyses of Technology and Construction Court (TCC) decisions on adjudication enforcement, jurisdiction and natural justice (Danion v IPS Roofing and Coventry v Avison Young), new International Commercial Arbitration Court (ICAC) rules of conduct for arbitrators, News Analysis of an Outer House of the Court of Session decision on prescription under the Prescription (Scotland) Act 2018 (Ogilvie Construction v M1 RE Glasgow; Ogilvie Construction v Leach Rhodes Walker), and the UK Green Building Council's (UKGBC) new Regenerative Places Framework for Housing, and the Competition and Markets Authority's (CMA) response on consumer protection for home upgrade schemes.

This Practice Note examines the legal and practical issues for an employer to consider in relation to hybrid working, sometimes known as agile working, blended working or split working patterns or arrangements, where staff attend the workplace for part of their working time and work from home or elsewhere remotely for part of their working time. Hybrid working can be distinguished from pure home working, where the worker works entirely from home, although some employers have had partial homeworking arrangements in place for some time. The concept of hybrid working has emerged from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, during which many employees have been working entirely, or primarily, from home, and it is envisaged that employees will continue to work for part of the time at home, while returning to their workplaces for the remainder. The employer’s approach to hybrid working will vary depending on a number of factors, primarily the nature of the organisation and what it does. For example, it may be relatively straightforward for an office-based employer to offer hybrid working to nearly all of its

ARCHIVED: This Practice Note has been archived and is not maintained. It considers the impact of Brexit on consumer protection taking into account developments up to 6 January 2021. For information on the impact of IP completion day on consumer protection and developments in this area, see Practice Note: What does IP completion day mean for consumer protection? This Practice Note considers the impact of Brexit on consumer protection, particularly in the context of the regulation of business-to-consumer (B2C) contractual relationships and trading practices, enforcement and consumer remedies. Consumer protection law in the UK derives partly from EU law and partly from UK-specific law. In many ways, Brexit has had less of an immediate impact in the consumer protection space because there is regulatory fragmentation across the EU, and EU Member States are familiar with having to consider specific requirements in cross-border situations. This does not, however, mean that there has been no impact for consumers (and consequently for businesses). This Practice Note considers the following: • Background • Changes to consumer protection • Changes to consumer

ARCHIVED: This Practice Note has been archived and is not maintained. This Practice Note explains choice of court agreements, as set out in Article 25 of Regulation (EU) 1215/2012, Brussels I (recast). It covers a range of issues such as derogation, when Article 25 of Regulation (EU) 1215/2012, Brussels I (recast) does not apply, whether hybrid agreements are covered, the effect on non-EU parties and the requirements for a valid choice of court agreement. It also covers the hearing and the standard of proof required. This Practice Note includes discussion of the application of Article 25 to the UK as a non-EU Member State (or a third state as they are often known) following its departure from the EU (subject to the application of transitional provisions in the Withdrawal Agreement). For general guidance on the application of this article to third states, as well as the other provisions of the regulation that are relevant to third states, namely Articles 18(1), 21(2), 24, 26, 33 and 34 of Regulation (EU)

This week's edition of Arbitration weekly highlights includes coverage of arbitration-related decisions from Hong Kong, Singapore and Germany, and updates from the LCIA, AAA and DIA. All this, and more in our weekly highlights.

This Practice Note considers issues arising in multi-jurisdictional outsourcing arrangements, including offshore and nearshore transactions. Outsourced service provision is an established business strategy in most developed economies of the world and is increasing its prevalence in developing countries. This Practice Note considers the following key issues specific to multinational or offshore outsourcing arrangements: • Initial considerations • Deal structures • Payment and invoicing • Benchmarking • Governing law • Forum for resolving disputes • Jurisdiction • Operational issues • Data protection • Personnel • Tax considerations • Corruption, slavery and ethical issues • Termination For an outsourcing agreement suitable for use in international transactions, see Precedent: Outsourcing agreement—long form. See also Precedent: Offshore IT outsourcing—training materials. For more general guidance on contracting internationally, see: International contracts—overview. For jurisdiction specific guidance, see: Doing business in key global jurisdictions—overview and Lexology Panoramic: Outsourcing. Initial considerations The growth in international outsourcing has been facilitated by suppliers having developed credible regional delivery centres that can deliver the outsourced services on a cross-border basis so as to meet local requirements. An international outsourcing transaction

What are insurance-linked securities? Insurance-linked securities (ILS) are a form of risk management for insurance and reinsurance firms. Insurers routinely manage their exposure to risk by entering into an arrangement in which: • the insurer retains its direct liability to its policy holders, but • another firm ◦ receives amounts corresponding to part of the premia paid by policy holders to the insurer, and ◦ is liable to pay amounts to the insurer which correspond to an agreed proportion of losses incurred by the insurer This is also referred to as risk mitigation or risk transfer. The most common form of insurance risk management is reinsurance, where the insurer enters into a reinsurance agreement with another insurance company which specialises in reinsurance. A reinsurer may itself reinsure all or part of the risk that has been transferred to it. This is called ‘retrocession’ rather than reinsurance. The reinsurer of a reinsured risk is called the ‘retrocessionnaire’. ILS are a form of risk management in which: • an insurance or reinsurance firm

Section 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983 (MeHA 1983) makes provision for a patient to be admitted to a hospital and detained there after an application for admission for assessment has been successfully made, for the purposes of assessing their mental health. MeHA 1983, s 3 makes provision for a patient to be admitted to a hospital and detained there, after an application for admission for treatment has been successfully

This Practice Note forms part of the Data Protection Negotiation Guide (the Guide). This part of the Guide addresses the negotiation of provisions relating to the requirement under Article 28(1) of the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation, Assimilated Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (UK GDPR) for controllers to only use processors providing ‘sufficient guarantees’ to implement technical and organisational measures so that their processing is UK GDPR-compliant and to ensure that data subjects’ rights are protected. For an introduction to the Guide, related content and instructions on how to use this information, see Practice Note: Data protection negotiation guide—controller: processor—introduction. This Practice Note utilises a number of common abbreviations. They are separately defined within the above introduction. As explained in Practice Note: Data protection negotiation guide—controller: processor—introduction: • the parties have commercial flexibility to allocate the costs and expenses of performing these obligations between themselves • there are significant similarities between the UK GDPR and the EU’s General Data Protection

This week's edition of Dispute Resolution weekly highlights includes: analysis of a number of key DR developments and key judicial decisions including the 191st Practice Direction update which introduces the ‘access to public domain documents pilot’ (coming into force on 1 January 2026) and the Court of Appeal decision in Advanced Multi-Technology for Medical Industry (trading as Hitex) v Uniserve Ltd (terminating contracts); dates for your diary; details of our most recently published content; and other information of general interest to dispute resolution practitioners.