Hempsons LLP appoints 11 new junior equity partners

Health and social care specialists Hempsons LLP has announced the appointment of 11 new junior equity partners. The move is an important change to the structure of the partnership: one that is intended to boost the firm’s ability to attract and retain the best healthcare lawyers as it seeks to continue its recent growth across all its health and social care subsectors.

Managing partner Graham Lea commented:

“Since our conversion to LLP status we have been planning a more progressive and modern partnership with a new partner career structure. This move, which sees eleven of our salaried partners promoted to junior equity partner, will encourage and channel their entrepreneurial and other talents to help the firm in our next stage of development. Their contributions have been invaluable, and we are confident that they will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of our firm.”

Meet our new junior equity partners

Gautam Chawla: Gautam specialises in healthcare litigation and, in particular, clinical negligence claims. Gautam has acted in a wide variety of cases including dental, gynaecological, infection, neurosurgical, obstetric, ophthalmic, oncological, orthopaedic and spinal injury claims.

Martin Cheyne: The majority of Martin’s clients are health or social care organisations and he frequently defends factually complex and also legally novel claims, particularly in relation to disability, sex and sexual orientation discrimination and whistle-blowing allegations.

Andrew Daly: Andrew is head of procurement within Hempsons’ specialist procurement law team. He utilises the knowledge gained from acting for clients on both sides of the fence to provide pragmatic advice on running defensible procurement processes/defending procurement law challenges, and also to advise bidders on improving their chances of success/challenging defective processes.

James Down: James leads Hempsons’ inquest team in the north. He is a vastly experienced advocate who regularly represents the interests of organisations and individuals in complicated and high profile inquests, including deaths of patients detained under the Mental Health Act and hospital deaths involving complex medical issues.

Philippa Doyle: Philippa has practised almost exclusively in the health and social care sector for over 20 years. She is head of the social care team and provides advice and support to varied providers ranging from care home groups challenging local authority fee setting processes to the successful resistance of a safeguarding and fraud investigation into alleged mis-use of client monies.

Richard Greensit: Richard is a leading healthcare expert with extensive experience of healthcare litigation against the NHS, hospital trusts and individual medical practitioners. He provides advocacy services to mental health and acute hospital trusts and regularly appears in the coroner’s court.

Liz Hackett: Liz has extensive experience across all aspects of healthcare advice and litigation, working with NHS trusts, private health providers and the public sector. Her primary practice areas are inquests and inquiries, statutory and non-statutory investigations (including serious incident investigations, prison and probation ombudsman investigations, IOPC investigations, domestic homicide reviews and serious case reviews) and mental health law.

Stephen Maratos: Stephen leads the litigation team in the Newcastle office and specialises in clinical negligence claims for NHS Resolution as well as private individuals and their defence organisations. He has been working in the field since 2005 and his work ranges from complex brain/spinal injury to orthopaedics and general surgery.

Bryn Morgan: Bryn is a real estate lawyer and  represents 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. He has a particular specialism in acting for GPs.  Bryn has advised on the real estate aspects of over 30 large scale projects including service reorganisations, mergers and acquisitions.

Richard Nolan: Richard has been a partner in the commercial team and head of our commercial dispute resolution team since 2008. His practice comprises a broad mix of non contentious and contentious commercial law and dispute resolution. The public sector work undertaken in this area is often of high value, complex and attract public interest.

Patricia Roe: Patricia has more than 20 years’ experience in the field of healthcare law predominantly in relation to clinical negligence claims. She represents both NHS and private clients in clinical negligence claims instructed by NHS Resolution, individual trusts and medical defence organisations.

About Hempsons

Hempsons LLP is a top-rated national law firm and a leader in the fields of health and social care law, crime and charity law. In the NHS alone, our clients include approximately 150 trusts, foundation trusts and commissioners. We act for private healthcare providers and hundreds of individual GPs, dentists and other healthcare-related professionals, and have particular expertise working for care home and social care providers challenging CQC inspection reports.

Our ‘top 10′ charities practice has in excess of 160 clients, comprising charity and not-for-profit organisations of all sizes and our charity solicitors have extensive experience in this area.