Full career history

I am proud to have been described in a written reference from Simon Davenport (now QC) as having “fantastic team building capacities, a fastidious approach to case preparation, weeding out the unnecessary and focussing on the critical, being an effective negotiator and having sound judgment – allied with a warmth and approachability to clients.” (click to see full letter)

I have been a qualified solicitor since 1984 having worked within the legal profession as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives for some years before that.

Between 1988 and 1994 I traded as a sole practitioner solicitor with a staff of 10, personally primarily engaged in a very wide variety of litigation and business issues before then merging my practice with a much larger one in 1994.

Until March 2006 I was then one of the senior partners running a progressive and modern 10 partner law firm with a commercial bias. (Rogers & Norton, Norwich) I left the partnership (but still have close links with them) to realise a long held ambition to travel extensively, write and live abroad. I then established my current very independent style of practice in July 2008.

My work as a solicitor has always been primarily litigation based and my specialist areas of practice in particular from 1994 onwards were in commercial dispute resolution (otherwise known as commercial litigation).

Whilst I handled a considerable number of "day to day" lower value disputes for clients and have been happy to continue to do so, I also have considerable experience in some particularly challenging cases and issues. I quote again from the above mentioned letter from Simon Davenport QC who very adequately summarised my role in saying that this involved me in the conduct of some very complex, large scale and high value domestic and international commercial/common law litigation, arbitration and mediation. I handled those cases as leader of whatever lawyer structure was in place for the conduct of them. This included for example, a number of significant cases involved in the oil industry in the UK, Nigeria, Mexico and Scandinavian water sectors. Those cases involved international joint venture and sensitive local jurisdictional issues.

In addition, I undertook an interlinked series of shareholder control issues involving the profits and application of ultra deep spallation drilling technology in the UK and US in particular, also involving argument over the ownership of US litigation proceeds. These claims involved mediation by the foremost mediators in the UK and ground breaking argument in relation to abuse of confidence.

I have also handled the ultra-sensitive emergency closure of a large UK company and its involvement in a series of pieces of litigation in the commercial and environmental fields and have also been extensively involved in intellectual property issues.

Since establishing my current independent practice in 2008, I have continued with my litigation role. I have been particularly heavily involved (on a quasi in-house basis for the client) with the defence a complex £90 million fraud and breach of warranty claim working in a closely co-ordinated manner with a large and well respected firm of solicitors who have conduct of the case.

In addition to undertaking litigation for clients, I was appointed to the role of an additional advisor, successfully working for over a year alongside a firm of London solicitors in connection with a significant dispute concerned with forward trading in foreign currency.