The Legal 500

Position

John is the group chief executive of Irwin Mitchell. He has the ultimate responsibility for the management of the Group. As such he sits on the main board of the holding company and the Executive Board of the LLP. He leads the team of executive directors and chairs a number of groups within the firm. His roles include involvement in the remuneration committee and nominations committee. Also, recognising his interest in international matters, he chair the firm’s international strategy group. He also has significant CRM responsibilities mainly for some of the firm’s key banking clients and chairs the firm’s banking services group. He regularly engages with the wider business community, and is a member of the regional council of the CBI, as well as being involved with the managing partners forum and Network MP. He takes an active role in the Sheffield city region, recognising Irwin Mitchell’s place as a major employer in this region (the site of the head office), and is a member of the Sheffield Business Advisory Panel. A significant external role for John is as a member of the Civil Justice Council, which enables him to engage with an area of both personal and firm interest in the law reform agenda. This role recognised his past experience of work in the litigation field. Finally, he has other executive functions including being a board member of Irwin Mitchell Abogados and Coris UK. Previously, he headed up the firm’s personal injury division for over 20 years and oversaw a period of dramatic growth which resulted in the firm becoming one of the leading personal injury firms in the country. His contribution within that field of law was recognised by his acceptance as a senior fellow of APIL (Association of Personal Injury Lawyers). John has been involved in a number of precedent-setting personal injury/clinical negligence cases, and he has sat on many high level working groups and committees looking at law reform including the Civil Justice Review, the Master of Rolls Working Party on Structured Settlements, and the Chief Medical Officers Advisory Group on Clinical Negligence.

Career

Articled Irwin Mitchell; qualified 1979; partner 1980; he has lectured widely, nationally and internationally, on personal injury and clinical negligence, and is a consultant editor of Jordan’s Civil Court Service. International work: he was involved in the founding of the Pan European Organisation of Personal Injury Lawyers (PEOPIL) and was president of that organisation from 2004-09; his international work led to his being appointed vice-president of The Academy of European Law (ERA); he is also one of only two UK governors sitting on the Board of Governors of the American Association for Justice (AAJ) – he is the past chair of the AAJ’s International Relations Committee and is on the board of the Birth Trauma Litigation Group. National work: as part of his work for the forum, he co-authored the Clinical Negligence Pre-Litigation Protocol; he is a member of and assessor for the Law Society’s Personal Injury Panel. He is a member of both the Law Society’s and AVMA’s (Action againstMedical Accidents) clinical negligence panels; he is also a member of the Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) and the South African Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (SAAPIL).

Member

Regional Council of CBI; Business Advisory Panel (Sheffield); Managing Partners Forum; Network MP; Trustee of Neurocare; Action Against Medical Accidents (AVMA); American Association for Justice (AAJ) – (formerly ATLA); Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA). Formerly: president of the Pan European Organisation of Personal Injury Lawyers (PEOPIL) and founder board member; secretary and executive committee member of Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL); on the Board of Governors of the American Association for Justice (AAJ, formerly ATLA) and chair of the International Relations Committee and International Practice Section; vice chair and executive committee member of the Clinical Disputes Forum; vice chair of the Child Brain Injury Trust.

Education

Manchester University (1976 LLB Hons).

Leisure

Theatre, tennis, golf, motor racing.

Practice Areas

Clinical negligence - claimant; Healthcare; Personal injury - claimant