Morning Briefing: WA Law Society president resigns

Matthew Keogh has announced his resignation as president of the Law Society of Western Australian having been elected as a by-election candidate for the Australian Labor Party. He has been a member of the society for ten years and has served on the executive council since 2008. Senior vice president Elizabeth Needham will assume the role of Acting President of the Law Society.
 
China will have 300,000 lawyers by the end of the year
China will have 300,000 licensed lawyers by the end of the year working in 20,000 law firms. A report from xinhuanet.com says that there have been an average of 20,000 new layers each year in recent years as the number of lawsuits in the country has reached 2.8 million annually. However China has 8.5 million lawsuits each year but around three quarters are not trusted to lawyers.
 
Chapman Tripp announces chief-executive-elect
New Zealand law firm Chapman Tripp has announced that Nick Wells will become chief executive partner in mid-2016. He will succeed Andrew Poole. Wells has been a partner at the firm for 12 years and currently leads the Maori Legal Team. He will continue to be a full-time practising partner alongside his new role.
 
Europe’s ‘right to be forgotten’ law reveals flaw
The European Union’s creation of a blunt instrument to tackle the issue of internet privacy has revealed a design fault. The principle of the ‘right to be forgotten’ is that when a court orders a search engine to remove a listing from its vast index, the search company must comply in order to protect the privacy of an individual. However in practice it is proving to be tricky. The Guardian reports that Google complied with a court order to remove listings for stories relating to a decade-old criminal offence but is now facing new orders to remove links to stories which reported Google’s removal of the earlier stories! As the stories reported details of the original criminal offence they are subject to the same court order. Assuming that journalists continue to report on the removals, and mention the original case, this could go on for some time yet!