Stephenson Harwood

Employment, Pensions, Private Wealth, Immigration, Contentious Trusts and Corporate Tax

Helena Berman is the head of Stephenson Harwood’s pensions and private wealth disputes team in London. With over 30 years’ experience in complex, high-value pensions, contentious trust, tax and probate/family disputes, Helena is recognised as a leading industry figure. She acts for corporates, trustees, financial services firms, financial institutions, insurers, and HNW individuals and families.

Helena has acted on a number of high-profile reported cases and has successfully challenged orthodox thinking on important legal issues, such as the law of limitation and the construction of trust documents.  Helena is considered an expert on the construction and rectification of trust documents. Helena also specialises in professional negligence claims related to all of these specialist areas, acting for both defendants and claimants, where she applies her deep knowledge of the areas in which she specialises to obtain exceptional results - primarily via dispute resolution methods such as settlement/mediation of these claims, allowing clients to avoid mounting litigation costs.

Helena is ranked in Legal 500's Hall of Fame for Pensions Litigation, and noted by the guide as a Leading Partner for Contentious Trusts and Probate. She is also recognised by Chambers UK as a Band 1 practitioner for pensions disputes, and by Chambers HNW for private wealth disputes.

Helena sits on the Dispute Resolution Committee of the Association of Pensions Lawyers and is regularly invited to speak at industry conferences and contribute to leading publications.  She is the co-founder of the Fresh Perspectives conference, a flagship summit in the contentious trusts industry which brings together solicitors, barristers, offshore lawyers and trust practitioners to discuss topical issues within the sector.