Hempsons

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Adam Smith

Hempsons

Adam joined Hempsons in January 2020 as part of our merger with Eastwoods, having originally trained at Hempsons. Adam was one of the three founding solicitors at Eastwoods and became a partner in 2008.  Adam’s defence practice covers regulatory and disciplinary (GMC/MPTS, GDC, HCPC and others), crime (particularly sexual assault and gross negligence manslaughter) and inquests, as well as representation of police officers in criminal (IOPC) and gross misconduct proceedings. Adam sits part time as an Assistant Coroner in both Milton Keynes and Inner North London.

Bertie Leigh

Hempsons

Consultant; specialises in medical negligence, other professional negligence, hospital litigation, institutions specifically concerned with obstetrics, anaesthetics and paediatrics; special interest in medical ethics, on which he writes articles and lectures.

Bryn Morgan

Hempsons

During his career Bryn has represented a diverse range of clients, ranging from listed corporations, NHS trusts, professional bodies and charities, livery companies and housing associations to smaller businesses, healthcare professionals and private individuals, in many different real estate transactions. Bryn therefore offers his clients a service which utilises these experiences to provide an efficient and pragmatic approach to their property needs. Bryn has advised on the real estate aspects of over 30 large scale projects including service reorganisations, mergers and acquisitions, transforming community services and other service spin outs and the 2013 NHS transition flowing from the national dissolution of primary care trusts. Bryn also deals with all legal aspects of estate management for a number of NHS trusts, livery companies, housing associations and third sector bodies. In addition, Bryn advises healthcare professionals in connection with their partnership arrangements both in terms of their business needs and to secure their property investments. This combined approach ensures the key aspects of entering into a partnership are dealt with comprehensively at the outset and can be managed effectively during the life of the partnership. Bryn’s specialisms include acting for GPs in the development of new surgery premises via 3rd Party Developer (3PD) schemes. He also regularly advises GPs and other NHS bodies in connection with LIFT schemes.

Chris Morris

Hempsons

Chris became the firm’s Senior Partner in January 2018. He first qualified as a dental surgeon, and practised dentistry in the UK and overseas for ten years before training as a solicitor. Chris became a partner at Hempsons in 1996 specialising in all aspects of dental and regulatory law and heads Hempsons’ National Dental Team and the firm’s Regulatory and Crime Team. Chris has long been recognised as a leader and Band 1 practitioner in the field of Professional Discipline by the Legal 500 and Chambers directories. Chris has been President of the Dental Law & Ethics Forum since 2001, and was an elected member of the ARDL committee from 2015-2018. Main areas of practice include defending healthcare practitioners at the GDC, GMC, GOC and HPC; Defendant clinical negligence litigation for dentists, doctors and other healthcare professionals; NHS regulatory work (e.g. Performers List hearings and FHSAA appeals; Specialist List applications and appeal; Acting in disputes between practitioners; and all types of GDC and GMC registration matters.

Elizabeth Thomas

Hempsons

Elizabeth is in the main a litigator with broad experience of advising NHS trusts, NHS Resolution and MDOs on complex and high value clinical negligence matters. Elizabeth is the firm lead for assisting Trusts and NHS Resolution in the Early Notification Scheme initiative and had a key role in setting up the firm’s Covid-19 portal in response to the recent pandemic.Aside from litigation, Elizabeth works with individual healthcare professionals, students and Royal Colleges in regulatory and advisory matters. While being part of the London office, Elizabeth has worked remotely for the past six years gaining experience that has been called upon in the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. She is based in the Channel Islands. Elizabeth has an academic background in healthcare ethics having studied it at Yale University, during her Masters degree at Manchester University and during her undergraduate degree at Cambridge University. She is an active member of Guernsey’s Princess Elizabeth Hospital Ethics Committee as well as being a Trustee of the UK Clinical Ethics Network. Elizabeth’s undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences (Pembroke College) Cambridge enables her to get to grips with the science of healthcare claims and to relate to the professionals she advises and supports.Elizabeth is married to a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and has two sons.

Fiona Wilson

Hempsons

As the head of the private client department, Fiona’s work covers a diverse range of legal services catering for the needs of individual private clients and their families on a personal level. This typically includes all advice relating to wills and estate tax planning, including the provision of sensitive and effective guidance with regard to the administration of estates. Fiona also provides assistance where a family dispute has arisen, and practical advice in connection with the future management of financial affairs, which includes the preparation of property, affairs and personal welfare lasting powers of attorney. Another important area of her work, as part of the firm’s third sector team, is to give advice in the legacy field. Fiona has acted for a number of years for a large number of national charities including NHS trusts. Fiona takes a deep personal interest in all of her clients and considers herself fortunate to have gained many by frequent referrals from existing clients and other professional connections.

Gautam Chawla

Hempsons

Gautam is a partner who specialises in healthcare litigation and, in particular, clinical negligence claims. He trained and qualified at a leading clinical negligence firm and has been dealing exclusively with clinical negligence claims since 2006. Gautam has acted in a wide variety of cases including dental, gynaecological, infection, neurosurgical, obstetric, ophthalmic, oncological, orthopaedic and spinal injury claims. At Hempsons Gautam has the benefit of working closely with colleagues who are recognised as leaders in the field of healthcare litigation, some of whom have medical as well legal backgrounds.

Graham Lea

Hempsons

Graham has considerable experience of all types of development work acting for both developers of and finance providers to shopping centres and other retail schemes, warehouse schemes, office developments such as Canary Wharf, and more recently leisure and health care developments. He has negotiated development agreements, funding agreements, building contracts, professional warranties and agreements for lease with occupational tenants.

Harjit Talwar

Hempsons

Harjit trained with a leading claimant clinical negligence firm in Manchester prior to completing the end of her training and qualifying with a leading defendant clinical negligence firm in 1999. She specialises in healthcare litigation and now focuses on defending clinical negligence claims against the NHS. In the past, Harjit acted for the General Dental Council in professional misconduct cases and also spent some time overseas acting as sole in house counsel for the Singapore Medical Council. Since joining Hempsons in January 2016, she has been dealing exclusively with clinical negligence claims. Harjit has acted in a wide variety of cases including brain injury, obstetrics/birth injury, spinal injury, gynaecology, dental, neurosurgical and orthopaedic. She is developing a keen interest in cauda equina cases.

Hilary King

Hempsons

Hilary enjoys advising on a wide range of issues affecting the NHS. One of the areas Hilary covers is contractual disputes. This may be a dispute between NHS England and a GP practice about some aspect of the GMS/PMS contract or a  dispute between a trust and one of its supplier of goods or services. Recently, for example, she has been dealing with a number of disputes about the terms on which locums have supplied to the NHS and problems with a company which archives records and wouldn’t release them, a cleaning company whose services were not up to standard and a supplier of a computer system. Hilary also deals with disputes which arise from time to time within GP partnerships. Hilary particularly enjoys advising on the legislation which either governs or affects the NHS. This includes a diverse range of topics such as how to apply the rules about overseas visitor charges, data protection and freedom of information, the supply of medicines and, recently, a particular interest of hers, the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme. Linked to this is Hilary’s experience in drafting statutory regulations for regulatory bodies on such issues as registration, renewal of registration, continuing education requirements and fees. Hilary also covers performance issues (particularly relating to GPs) and fitness to practice cases of which she has many years experience. This extends to advising membership organisations about problems they may encounter regarding the suitability of a particular individual to continue in membership.

Ian Hempseed

Hall of fameHempsons

Ian is a charity and corporate lawyer who has a wide range of experience in the field of commercial, constitutional and governance law. He heads up the Charities and Social Enterprise team at Hempsons – and our Practitioner team. His broad expertise in advising charities, social enterprises and other not for profit organisations enables us to provide pragmatic and proactive advice to the sector as a whole. He also works closely with organisations, public sector staff and entrepreneurs in developing appropriate legal structures for social enterprises. GPs, private consultants and other health professionals call upon Ian’s help to create appropriate corporate vehicles, particularly for consortium working. Ian is regularly invited by external organisations to run workshops and training sessions on a wide range of topics affecting charities and social enterprises. Ian Hempseed is also a Mutuals Ambassador for the Mutuals Programme run by the Cabinet Office. One of the aims of the Mutuals Programme is to drive the creation of new public service mutuals across public service. Ian is a trustee of Power to Change.

James Down

Hempsons

James is an expert in inquests and coronial law. He is an experienced advocate who regularly represents the interests of NHS Trusts and individual practitioners in complicated and high profile inquests, including deaths of patients detained under the Mental Health Act and hospital deaths involving complex medical issues. He frequently appears at Article 2 and jury inquests involving multiple agencies. James is also the firm’s lead contact for health & safety matters. He represents organisations and individuals facing HSE investigations and prosecution. He also has significant corporate support experience and advices NHS trusts on mergers and acquisitions, including conducting due diligence on the Trust’s services.

John Holmes

Hall of fameHempsons

John’s team specialises in providing advice on patient-related issues to a range of healthcare providers. Many problems he deals with relate to mental health, and this can range from helping trusts with issues about detention, across to inquests and related clinical claims. Often advice is needed quickly, and the strength of John’s team is that they understand client’s needs to know their position straight away when problems come to light. They also have the back up of a national advisory team, and that is key when they are so often dealing with changing legislation. The DOLs procedures and the recent Rabone Supreme Court decision are good examples where the team has been at the forefront of providing seminars and other learning opportunities. Inquests and related clinical governance issues are also important, and other areas like information governance are also a major part of what John does. In terms of well-known cases John was involved in the Bournewood and Clunis cases, and in a number of group actions such as Ledward and RAGE. Over recent years a lot of time has been spent working on homicide inquiries and other investigations for trusts with a number of these cases being reported extensively in the media. John also provides clients and others with training, and for a number of years he chaired the Butterworths/ Lexis Nexis national healthcare law conference, and have spoken at their Adult Safeguarding Conference on mental health issues.

Jonathan Pearce

Hempsons

Jon advises a wide range of clients predominantly operating in the health and social care and charity sectors on all aspects of employment law. He has particular expertise in advising on strategic personnel issues such as senior executive appointments and departures and complex change management situations, including large-scale restructurings and redundancies, outsourcings and TUPE transfers. Jon has considerable experience advising on high-value, complex discrimination and whistleblowing issues and litigation in the employment tribunal and higher courts. Jon is the go-to person in our London office for NHS Trusts who need support running and managing MHPS investigations/processes. Jon frequently provides bespoke training packages for clients both at the HR and Board level and speaks at external employment law events.

Justin Cumberlege

Hempsons

Justin joined Hempsons as a partner in April 2019. He specialises in providing legal advice to the primary care healthcare sector, and has over 25 years’ experience. Justin’s healthcare and public sector focus encompasses advice on governance and commercial issues for the sector as well as advising consultants forming LLPs and companies and charitable organisations. He has in-depth expertise in mergers of GP practices, forming GP federations and primary care organisations, and looks forward to applying this expertise to help primary care networks. Justin’s recent work includes joint venture agreements, sharing of staff between practices, and contracts to deliver services at scale in one of the pilot Integrated Care Systems. Justin will be working closely with the other members of the Hempsons primary care team across all four of our offices to continue to develop the services we provide for GPs and other healthcare practitioners.

Lynne Abbess

Hempsons

Lynne Abbess has over 35 years’ experience and a national reputation as a leading expert providing advice to professionals practising in partnership. She provides advice not only limited to partnership law but also concerning the business environment within which a practice operates. Lynne is both a commercial lawyer and a real estate lawyer which enables her to offer “joined up” advice relating to the functioning of the business as a whole, to include the essential (and very specialised) advice which governs surgery premises. This is critical within the healthcare sector as without the right to access the specialist premises required to provide the contracted services, quite simply, there is no ability for a doctor to practice. Not only is the premises’ requirement bespoke (unlike an office block – therefore imposing unique requirements) but the funding requirements are such that they result in unique drafting of partnership deeds/declarations of trust in order to cater for the requirements imposed by the NHS Regulations. In addition, Lynne advises on other areas which impact on the day to day running of a practice and any challenges faced, working closely with other teams on issues such as NHS Contract Law and Discrimination. Lynne’s focus during the past year has continued to be on: increasingly large/significant mergers of practices; and resolving partnership disputes – each case involving complex restructuring to avoid prejudicing the NHS Contract which is key to every practice’s survival. During the course of this year she has also: advised groups of NHS Consultants in setting up LLPs to deal with their private practices; and participated in a number of Mediations, resulting in successful settlements. She is a frequent writer of columns for the trade press and delivers lectures around the country. She is also an Accredited CEDR Mediator. Lynne is the sole legal representative on Lloyds Bank Healthcare Forum and is also the Joint Chair of the Primary Care Premises Forum, through which she has continued to participate in high level discussions with a variety of organisations concerned with the healthcare sector, including the BMA, the Nuffield, NHS Property Services and NHS England.

Mary Menjou

Hempsons

Mary is a partner in the healthcare litigation team. Mary qualified as a solicitor in 1991 and initially worked in house at the NHS Resolution (previously the NHS Litigation Authority). She is an extremely experienced litigator and has been involved in many of the leading cases in clinical negligence at the highest level. She also managed a large team of clinical negligence lawyers in East Anglia for many years.Recent cases involve neurosurgery, rare genetic syndromes and fetal anomalies. She also has a special interest in obstetric cases and has delivered seminars for both the Royal College of Obstetricians and Royal College of Midwives.

Tania Francis

Hempsons

Tania advises doctors, dentists and other healthcare professionals with all sorts of issues – GMC/GDC/GOC/GPhC/HCPC registration and regulatory issues, specialist registration/specialist lists, litigation, associate disputes, CQC registration, difficulties with NHS England and more. Tania is a qualified doctor and works in a team which also includes a qualified dentist, and they therefore offer a unique approach to our clients’ problems. The team regularly contributes to Independent Practitioner Today and Dentistry magazine, and offers training and seminars to our clients. Tania is also on the council of the Medico-Legal Society.