The LexisNexis Legal Awards 2020

The LexisNexis Legal Awards 2020 opened for entries at the start of September. There are 18 awards categories up for grabs celebrating the best of the best across the whole of the legal spectrum, including Diversity and Inclusion, Wellbeing, Customer Focus, Business Development, Legal Services Innovation, and Law Firm of the Year. For 2020, we are introducing four new awards categories—Case of the Year, Deal of the Year, Sustainability and International Team of the Year.

One of the most popular and prestigious of the awards is the Legal Personality of the Year award, which honours the individual who has made the most outstanding contribution in the legal sphere over the past year. This person needn’t necessarily have a legal background or qualification, but their actions should have had a significant impact upon the development of the law or its practice over the previous 12 months.

To help you to decide who to nominate we’ve briefly profiled some of the deserving contenders below, but you are free to propose your own candidates.

As has been the case since the referendum result of June 2016, the news headlines have been dominated by Brexit, and this has also had an impact in the legal world. In February, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) lost its High Court battle with Canary Wharf Group to cancel its £500m 25-year office lease in London to move to Amsterdam because of Brexit, with Mr Justice Smith ruling that the UK’s transition to a non-EU member state did not constitute a ‘frustrating event’ and that ‘the EMA remains obliged to perform its obligations under the lease’. Ben Hatton, director of property litigation at Clifford Chance, led the team acting for the landlord.

Workers rights have also been a key theme of the past 12 months. In December 2018, the Court of Appeal upheld the Employment Appeal Tribunal’s decision in Uber v Aslam that drivers for the transport network are classed as workers rather than self-employed contractors and are therefore entitled to benefits such as the minimum wage and paid holidays. The drivers in the case, Yaseen Aslam and James Farrar, were represented by Paul Jennings of Bates Wells Braithwaite and Nigel Mackay of Leigh Day.

In June, district judge Claire Gilham took her fight to the Supreme Court in a case that will clarify whistleblowing rights for judges who are currently classed as ‘office holders’ rather than ‘workers’ and so are not entitled to the safeguards granted to whistleblowers under the Employment Rights Act 1996 to make disclosures in the public interest. Gillham was represented by Emilie Cole, a partner at Irwin Mitchell, who hailed the unanimous Supreme Court ruling in their favour as a massive step forward for equality law.

In April, a viola player Christopher Goldscheider, represented by Chris Fry of Fry Law, had his High Court victory against the Royal Opera House upheld when the Court of Appeal confirmed that his employers had failed to take reasonable steps to protect his hearing at a rehearsal of Wagner’s The Valkyrie. The case established ‘acoustic shock’ as a condition which could be compensated by a court and brought the orchestra pit in line with other working environments, such as a factory floor.

Finally, undoubtedly the biggest case of the past 12 months in terms of political and constitutional significance, was the Supreme Court’s decision on 24 September that the government’s attempt to suspend Parliament for five weeks was unlawful. The unanimous ruling of 11 Supreme Court judges was delivered by Lady Hale and marked the culmination of proceedings initially instigated in the Scottish courts by Joanna Cherry, the MP for Edinburgh South West and a former solicitor and advocate who was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2009.

You can nominate any of these candidates—or suggest one of your own—by submitting your entry on the awards website at www.lexisnexislegalawards.co.uk by the closing date of Friday 15 November. The judges will then select a shortlist from these entries, with the winner being decided by an online vote of the New Law Journal readership.