The Legal 500

Fisher Meredith is an award-winning London firm with a national reputation for the strength and breadth of its litigation teams and its pre-eminence in public law and human rights cases. The firm is also increasingly focusing on services to businesses.

The firm: Fisher Meredith has won a number of industry awards over the past few years, including the Law Society and Commission for Racial Equality ‘Race Equality’ awards, and Law Society Gazette Centenary Awards for ‘Excellence in Practice Standards.’ Many of its lawyers are ‘leaders in their fields’.

Whilst the focus remains on offering specialist services to private individuals, the firm increasingly acts for and receives referrals from businesses, voluntary sector agencies, trade unions, charities and foreign embassies and also provides workplace legal services to company employees.

Types of work undertaken: Family: Eileen Pembridge and Louise Barretto head a nationally renowned team of 14 lawyers with expertise in all aspects of divorce, civil registration, separation and cohabitation disputes, including financial and property issues, freezing of assets, prenuptial agreements, collaborative law and mediation.

Children: a team of 17 lawyers with expertise in public law and private law children cases, child abduction and adoption in both domestic and international public law children proceedings. Qualified mediators can assist.

Civil and commercial litigation: particular expertise in property litigation, building disputes and professional negligence, as well as most types of civil and commercial litigation and dispute resolution, including consumer issues and contentious probate.

Education: the education team focuses on special educational needs (SEN) and disability work, admissions, exclusions and higher education, as well as judicial review challenges. The team also deals with connected community care issues relating, in particular, to disabled children.

Property and private client: the property and private client team encompasses all aspects of residential and commercial property, wills and probate, trust work and charity work.

Employment: the firm acts for employers and employees in contentious and non-contentious matters and specialises in complex cases with a focus on race and sex discrimination and disability issues.

Company and commercial: the firm acts particularly for owner-managers and the SME sector.

Immigration: expertise in dealing with all aspects of immigration and nationality law for businesses and private individuals, as well as asylum cases.

Criminal, road traffic and regulatory matters: expertise in general crime, road traffic, civil and criminal fraud, as well as cash and asset recovery within the civil courts and regulatory issues.

Police and prison law: an experienced team dealing with all aspects of police law and related disciplinary matters, with a proven track record of successful claims against defendant police forces. Also regularly instructed in a number of high-profile prisoners’ rights issues and inquests.

Public law and human rights: the firm acts for organisations and claimants across a wide range of specialist areas and has an outstanding reputation for its public law and human rights expertise.

Landlord and tenant: the team of 12 lawyers deals with social housing issues for claimants and legal issues for private landlords. Particular expertise in homelessness, disrepair and civil ASBOs.

Other areas of expertise: mental health including lawfulness of detention and appropriateness of treatment, Court of Protection and mental capacity cases and a range of community care issues. Specialism in providing remedies for the victims of historic child abuse cases, particularly ‘looked after’ children.

Number of UK partners 16
Number of other UK fee-earners 74