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Best in Class

Best in Class celebrates the lawyers breaking ground in the profession, including in diversity. We celebrate these stars from in-house, private practice and the Bar in The Lawyer’s Hot 100 and The Lawyer Awards.

The Lawyer Awards

The Lawyer Awards 2020 in association with Travelers virtual ceremony

In light of the ongoing COVID-19 disruption, it had become apparent that coming together for The Lawyer Awards ceremony in its usual format would not be possible this year. However, The Lawyer team, our judges and sponsors all agreed that it is vital for the hard work showcased in the 500+ entry submissions received this year to be recognised and rewarded. We are thrilled to announce that this year’s winning individuals and teams have been announced and the recording is now available to view.   Once again, thank you to everyone that contributed to the success of our first virtual awards ceremony and congratulations to the winners!

Kate Staples CAA
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The Lawyer Awards 2020: Who won GC of the year?

Kate Staples of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is The Lawyer’s General Counsel of the Year, sponsored by FTI Consulting, for 2020. She wowed the judges, who praised her “passion and commitment to her role.” Said one: “Kate has shown that she takes a fresh view to the role of a regulator, has shown innovation […]

The Lawyer Awards 2020: Who won City law firm of the year?

In a wildly competitive market, Latham & Watkins clearly stands out both for its rapid growth in the capital and also for its ongoing commitment to pro bono work, as well as the numerous career development initiatives it has introduced recently. In London last year, Latham lawyers opened more than 100 new matters and donated […]

The Lawyer Awards 2020: Who won Law firm of the year?

In a year that has made everyone revise their opinions of what normal looks like in business, it is fitting that the biggest award of the year goes to firm that like no other, encapsulates the radical changes that have happened in the legal sector. For the first time in the history of The Lawyer […]

The Lawyer Awards 2020: Who won In-house legal operations team of the year?

At this month’s The Lawyer Awards, insurance giant Royal London won the prize for in-house legal operations team of the year, sponsored by Digital Legal Exchange. It fended off competition from a number of contenders that managed to tap into their teams’ capabilities and external resources to reinvent how they worked and better serve the […]

Roundtable: The growing influence of litigation funding and managing London’s reputation

This year’s Litigation Team of the Year, sponsored by Gallagher’s Dispute Resolution/Major Risks Practice, shows the strength and breadth of London’s disputes market and the shortlisted litigation teams joined The Lawyer for a discussion in the lead up to this year’s virtual awards. Representatives from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Freeths […]

Hot 100

Gold stars

Revealed: The Hot 100 2021

Members of The Lawyer Hot 100 have just two things in common. The first is excellence. Every year, our Hot 100 covers an incredibly diverse mix of legal professionals: scrappers from the rough and tumble of criminal law; sharp-suited corporate dealmakers; intellectuals and silver-tongued advocates from barristers’ profession; the in-house counsel with the ear of […]

Diversity in law firms

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Clifford Chance sets up working groups to tackle retention issues

Clifford Chance is starting a series of focus groups in its London office that will look at ways to boost ethnic minority retention rates in coming years. Starting later this month and ending in the first weeks of February, the firm has formed focus groups consisting of people of ethnic minorities and white colleagues – […]

Black history month

Black History Month: Looking backwards and upwards

As a woman of Nigerian, Jamaican and English heritage, born and raised in the north of England and from a working-class background, I grew up with strong ambitions, work ethic and pride in my background and culture. So for me, Black History Month (BHM) is an opportunity to celebrate and remember the achievements of black […]

Black History Month: Osborne Clarke’s TK Spiff

Coming from a Nigerian background there a few avenues you are pushed down, and my mum thought being a lawyer was what I was good at. Sciences didn’t work for me; law made sense at age 16. I was born in Oxford but grew up in Aylesbury. I have been in London for six years […]

Black History Month: Black Men in Law co-founder Isaac Eloi

I took Religious Studies, Business Studies, English and Spanish as A Levels. I liked reading, writing and analysing things that were linked to intellectual pursuits. I wanted to study something with languages and Law seemed like a good choice, so I read Law with Spanish at Sheffield. * Challenges came thick and fast and started […]

Black History Month: Heward-Mills’ Dyann Heward-Mills

I spent my formative years in Ghana until the age of 12 when I moved to the UK. I went to school in Nottingham. It was at sixth form college where I found myself and where I met more diverse people – my school was mainly white. It was strange being surrounded by a sea […]

Black History Month: BCLP’s Segun Osuntokun

I was born in Nigeria and came to England when I was 15 to go to boarding school to do my A-Levels. I did a couple of degrees – economics in London and a law degree in Oxford. I did my articles at and joined Wilde Sapte as a litigator and that is what I […]

My pride story

My Pride Story: a client secondment helped me come out

With Pride celebrations cancelled this year due to COVID-19 I found myself asking – what does Pride mean to me and, what is my Pride story? When I first started in the legal industry it wasn’t as much a question of being “out in the office” that I struggled with as much as struggling being […]

My Pride Story: Do I still face prejudices? Of course.

Let me start by describing my “coming out experience”. It shouldn’t define one’s path but negative experiences shape how one deals with it going forward. Growing up, I never expected to come out. I wanted a family – I wanted to get married and have children, but that was unthinkable for gay men when I […]

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My Pride Story: Our job is to ensure coming out gets easier, for everyone

With the benefit of hindsight, coming out at work was surprisingly easy. But it followed a lengthy period of sleepless nights. For a long time I kept my private life completely separate from my career; it was one of those subjects that I never really got drawn into conversations about. I mangled sentences desperately looking […]

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