As the nation gears up to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee next weekend, businesses up and down the country are scratching their heads over their employees' right to the extra bank holiday, scheduled for Tuesday 5th June.

Amidst the confusion, lawyers and HR experts have been busy publishing their legal advice for employers.

The most salient point is that employees have no legal 'right' to the extra day off unless it is written into their employment contract. Similarly employers are not obliged to offer extra pay unless such a provision is made in the employment contract.

The Supreme Court yesterday commenced its hearing of a seven-year legal battle concerning the status in England and Wales of bankruptcy orders made abroad.

The law as it stands is that a bankruptcy order made abroad in the US, for example, is not enforceable in the UK unless there is a separate action brought in a UK court.

The Supreme Court is hearing the conjoined cases of Rubin v Eurofinance and New Cap Re.

The Government has been accused of being "obsessed with money" by the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association after a survey revealed that nine out of ten barristers are prepared to strike over proposed changes to the criminal justice system.

Max Hill QC addressed fellow barristers on Friday at the Criminal Bar Association annual dinner at Middle Temple Hall, painting a bleak future for the profession.

"Criminal barristers are facing heartache, depression and personal bankruptcy caused by the wanton failure of central Government to shore up the Legal Services Commission in such a way that they might pay us in reasonable time for concluded cases," he said, referring to the shocking delays in payments since the LSC took over barristers' pay from Her Majesty's Courts Service last April.

Scottish Conservatives have urged their counterparts across the EU to challenge the policy of minimum alcohol-pricing to establish whether it is compliant with EU laws on free trade.

The call comes despite the Scottish Conservatives backing the SNP Government's proposals, which could see a minimum 50p per unit price implemented north of the border.

The proposal is due to be put to a final vote on Thursday this week, and is widely tipped to become law.

The UK Government has stated that it will insist on tougher legal requirements than those required by the latest EU legislation on the subject.

The EU Directive on Animal Testing was drafted in 2010 and the UK has until 2013 to implement the proposals. However, in many cases the existing UK rules are more stringent than those required by the EU Directive.

The Government's stance on animal testing has been welcomed by animal-rights groups, but the RSPCA has expressed disappointment that they have not gone further.

The BBC, BskyB and a range of other media organisations yesterday won a High Court case against a series of police orders demanding that footage from the evictions at Dale Farm be handed over as possible evidence.

The travellers based at Dale Farm in Essex were evicted amid violent scenes last October.

At the time several news organisations had set up to film, including Independent Television News, Channel 5 and others. All the outlets joined forces to oppose the police disclosure orders.

The Crown Prosecution Service yesterday dramatically revealed that they would not oppose the appeal of Sam Hallam against murder charges which have seen him serve seven years in prison.

He was told on Wednesday that he would be released from prison with immediate effect.

Mr Hallam, 24, was jailed in 2005 for the murder of Essayas Kassahun, a trainee chef. He was just 17 years old at the time, and stood accused of being part of a baseball-bat-wielding gang who attacked and killed Mr Kassahun in East London.

At a speech at the London School of Economics this week, Lord Justice Sumption, the latest addition to the judiciary of the Supreme Court, said that he believes that the state will be held to account more often than it has done in the past.

Commentators are taking his assessment seriously: judges at Supreme Court level really do have an influence on the way the law develops in the United Kingdom.

His speech gives us the first idea of his political persuasions. He is one of the few judges in recent decades to have been appointed to the UK's highest court without having previously held a full-time judicial post.

The legal sale of prescription drugs by middlemen from UK distributors to other EU markets is prompting drastic shortages of key medicines, and could yet force the Government to review the law.

The all-party Pharmacy Group has just announced the findings of a six-month review into the issue and has concluded that the Government is putting EU free-trade law ahead of patient safety.

The group has called for an unequivocal message from law makers that UK patients come first ahead of free and fair trade.

Studying abroad for a year as part of your undergraduate legal education could open doors to internships and possible training contracts according to some law undergraduates currently on the Erasmus exchange programme.

The scheme places students from one European University at another for a year, and aims to breed cultural and social integration across European states, as well as producing more rounded graduates in a variety of subjects, including law.

Kiera Taylor is a law student at Kent University currently studying at the University of Copenhagen.

On Thursday 24 May we will be running a free online webinar promoting effective website strategies for client generation, and would like to invite solicitors to attend. It will be presented by Daniel Batten, one of our most experienced consultants.

It will run for about 30 minutes and will cover:

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Places are limited to ensure we have an appropriate amount of interaction with attendees, so if you're interested please register now. You will receive a reminder email 15 minutes before the webinar starts.

A woman who was abused on the social-network site Facebook has launched a landmark legal action against her tormentors in a case which could have wide ramifications for online conduct.

Nicola Brookes is taking legal action against Facebook to reveal the details of those who posted abuse on their site by setting up a fake profile using her name and details and using the rogue site to send explicit messages to underage girls, prompting taunts that she was a paedophile.

If successful, she has said that she will use the information to launch a private prosecution against her online tormentors, referred to in computer jargon as 'trolls'.

The Attorney General Dominic Grieve has warned internet users that the law will crack down on abusers posting on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, in the same way as it would should such activity take place in the street.

The warning came after a series of high-profile cases involving postings made on micro-blogging sites. In one case a student who mocked football star Fabrice Muamba after he collapsed and nearly died in a game was jailed for 56 days for a racially aggravated public-order offence.

In another, a blogger who threatened to force excrement through the letterbox of a local councillor was handed 80-hours' community service.

One week ago the Chancellor George Osborne claimed that signing up to the latest EU reforms of the banking structure would leave him looking like "an idiot". However, with further discussions on the subject timetabled this week, it seems that he may be ready to soften his stance.

The UK objections centre on French and German desires to alter the way the Basel III capital requirements are implemented in European banks.

Basel III is an internationally agreed set of rules designed to ensure that banks keep enough cash in reserve to protect themselves from a downturn in the market.

The European Union's law on carbon trading is set to have a major impact on small aircraft-operators and private owners, according to aviation law experts.

The scheme, which is designed to place the EU at the forefront of global efforts to reduce carbon output over the next few decades by as much as 80%, will see companies forced to pay for the amount of CO₂ they produce through a credit trading system.

The scheme is already highly unpopular with the major airlines, who claim that the system will mire them in increased costs and a massive burden of bureaucracy.