New Square Chambers

Amy Berry is well known and well liked amongst her peers for her succession work often on behalf or involving those who have lost capacity. Amy thinks laterally, she has to as she is dyslexic, and her work is bespoken and forward thinking. Amy has had a varied life and she deploys her skills at people management, farming, property development, acting as a trustee and caring/working with the disabled to create a real niche practice with a large following. Amy is in great demand and has an unbelievable ability to manage and resolve the most complex of cases and people; she is a survivor and ensures all her clients (both professional and lay) survive too. All those years playing chess and cards make her a great strategist; she can and does out manoeuvre her peers and will guide you out of tricky situations while retaining composure and charm.

Her work and practice sit largely within traditional chancery work including trusts, wills, estates, equitable remedies, court of protection, tax, property, farming, building, construction, planning, inheritance and related professional negligence. She is regularly involved in large and complex claims and mediations. But is equally happy dealing with anyone and everyone. Amy enjoys her work and gets a sense of pride in ensuring her work helps society grieve after what are usually the most harrowing of experiences. Amy has an uncanny ability to work with anyone and often her clients are those that solicitors find the most difficult to deal with. She is comfortable and at ease in any court room or mediation whether in person or remote.

She has a lovely manner that glows, giving a sense of calm and confidence to her clients but strikes fear in those she is about to cross examine. She is often instructed by her opposing solicitors after they see her in court or after mediations (and wishing they had instructed her first). Above all Amy is succinct, kind, considerate and patient. She will not faulter on her integrity, honesty or candor. She can be firm when required. And always adds value to a legal team.

Called to the Bar 2003; 9 Stone Buildings Pupillage Award.

Cassel Pupillage Awards (Lincoln’s Inn)

Property

The majority of her work in this area covers all real property from planning and construction to estate contracts and conveyance, restrictive covenants and easements to boundary disputes, mortgages and charges. Other aspects of her broad proprietary practice include claims under the Trust of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996, constructive and resulting trusts, proprietary estoppel, undue influence, statutory interpretation, construction of trusts, rectification, commercial and residential landlord and tenant, dilapidations, housing and professional negligence.

Trusts, Wills & Estates

Most of Amy’s practice consists of litigation in the private client area, including challenges to wills and trusts, administration of estates, court of protection, professional negligence, farming and trust of land disputes.

Amy’s acquired life skills from farming and property development enhance her practice.

Amy also advises on non-contentious applications in the probate court, applications to vary trusts, approval of compromises, drafts trust and will clauses.

She is keen to expand her International and EU Succession Regulation work.

Mediation

Amy is a lawyer, TEP and mediator with over 10 years mediation experience and over 19 years’ PQE. She has been involved in over 100 mediations as advocate and mediator both in person and over zoom. Amy has conducted many successful remote (zoom) mediations with clients around the world – saving travel costs and time and costs of venue hire and accommodation.

Amy has been appointed mediator and advocate in a large number of Contentious Probate and Trust, Professional Negligence, Court of Protection, Claims against Estates and TOLATA disputes, and her knowledge and expertise in these areas help to put the clients at ease and allow them to understand the more technical aspects that can arise – particularly fiscal and financial matters.

Amy has also been appointed mediator in a large number of Construction, Building Disputes and Farming matters, and her life skills and expertise in these areas help to put the clients and the professionals they bring to mediations (e.g., land agents, surveyors, engineers) at ease and allow them to understand the technical priorities and implications of their and encourage parties to think laterally to reach compromises.

She receives excellent praise and feedback following her mediations.

Amy is happy to mediate anywhere in the UK, at a very reasonable rate, simply ask the clerks to include Amy Berry as part of the selection process for mediations as mediator or advocate.

Amy writes & lectures widely and is always available to provide bespoke seminars in-house e.g.:

Contentious Probate Online Seminar – rectification following Graham v Lynch (September 2020) Simon Gore Consulting Ltd

The Solicitor Group Peterborough Wills & Probate (March 2020) solo half day lecture (stood in for Emma Chamberlain but wrote my own notes and booked to return but for CV19!)

Modern Families 2020: Domicile considering homosexual civil partnerships and marriage, surrogacy, adoption, IVF/assisted fertilisation, Whose gametes? Or shall we choose not to know? (March 2020) Simon Gore Consulting Ltd with Sam Dewes, Tax adviser, BDO LLP

A series of talks given at SFE AGM June 2019 including Missing PRs, beneficiaries, creditors and people, General Data Protection Regulations, & Can we draft better wills?

A corpse: who has the right to decide after death? Part 1 (May 2019) https://www.lawskills.co.uk/articles/2019/05/a-corpse-who-has-the-right-to-decide-after-death/

A corpse: who has the right to decide after death? Part 2 (June 2019) https://www.lawskills.co.uk/articles/2019/06/a-corpse-who-has-the-right-to-decide-after-death-part-2/

Back to basics how to instruct counsel in probate actions – published in Private Client Yearbook 2012

Indemnity costs and CPR 36 offers: ACTAPS Newsletter, No 154 (Sept 2012), p 4.

STEP; ACTAPS; CONTRA; Chancery Bar Association; Property Bar Association; COP Bar Association.