Issue: Vol 174, Issue 8098

From January 2025, independent schools will be subject to 20% VAT, leading to much head-scratching by school bursars. Writing in this week’s NLJ, Liz Brownsell, partner & head of charities at Birketts, and Kieran Smith, VAT partner at Crowe UK, look at a variety of options independent schools might consider to make the best of the situation.

Physician-assisted suicide should be the preferred term rather than ‘assisted dying’ when discussing the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, writes Professor John Keown, senior research scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, in this week’s NLJ.

Whether it’s a call to ‘bring me more Sir Geoffreys’ or a prediction gleaned from assorted discussions that ‘a series of reforms look certain for 2025’ (read the column to find out more), The Insider aka Professor Dominic Regan, of City Law School, serves the perfect Christmas cocktail of light-hearted stories and serious topics in his column this week.

NLJ's latest Charities Appeals Supplement has been published in this week’s issue.

Your mind is not a kettle. Product liability and neurotechnology is the subject of Crown Office Chambers barrister Harry Lambert’s fifth article in his astonishing series on neurotech law, in this week’s NLJ.

As it’s Christmas, and in lieu of frankincense and myrrh, NLJ offers a bumper two pages of Gold this week. Festive Civil Way topics include the bailiff dress code, PP arrears, DAPOs and the personal injury discount rate. 

Will the latest arguments in favour of the Leadbeater Bill be as flawed as those that came before? Professor John Keown considers what lessons can be learnt from history

Dominic Regan presents A Christmas Carol: enter, the ghosts of Christmas past (the Solicitors Act 1974), present (the new intermediate track), & future (PACCAR legislation)

With a raft of unwanted changes on the horizon, Liz Brownsell & Kieran Smith explore some of the options available to charitable independent schools

Did the Supreme Court ask for a can of worms for Christmas? Ian Smith wraps up the year in employment law with some final twists & turns