Hottest of the hot

The Lawyer today unveils its Hot 100 list for 2013 naming the high-flyers who will help shape the legal profession this year.

Among the list of legal luminaries are practitioners whose high-profile cases make them obvious choices – like Baker & McKenzie partner Tom Cassels, who is advising the BBC Trust on the Jimmy Savile scandal, and Hodge Jones & Allen partner Jocelyn Cockburn who acted for murder victim Stephen Lawrence’s father – and others whose light would otherwise remain hidden. Few may have heard of former Dewey & LeBoeuf administration director Karen Morrissey but, once informed, even fewer could argue that her hard work ensuring London staff found jobs in the wake of the firm’s collapse doesn’t deserve recognition.

Also notable is the inclusion of 46 women in this year’s list, none of whom were nominated by their organisations.

And this year marks the first time that The Lawyer interviewed Hot 100 lawyers on video. Jocelyn Cockburn dishes out advice for wannabe civil liberties lawyers here, saying: “It’s important to get that idea of the client contact and to show that you really are committed because there will be a lot of competition out there.”

Meanwhile, Stewarts Law family partner Helen Ward tells us why the Bar is “very busy identifying or dividing the judges up into boffins or gurus,” and Tim Ward QC recounts his shock at the media interest in the Libor rate-fixing claims case, on which he is acting.

“As a commercial QC press interest is the exception rather than the rule so it was a bit of a shock to go to a pre-trial case management conference and find that the world’s press had gathered,” he says.

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