The nature of Harriet Wistrich’s work naturally attracts column inches and generates enormous amounts of public interest. Last year, few cases captured people’s attention quite like the decision she won to overturn the release of ‘black cab rapist’ John Worboys after the Parole Board elected to set him free. Working with Matrix Chambers’ Phillippa Kaufmann QC, a prison law expert, Wistrich secured a crucially important disclosure showing flaws in the Parole Board’s review.

Wistrich also continues to represent Sally Challen in an important case regarding whether she should be freed after killing her allegedly abusive husband.

She now splits her time equally between the Centre for Women’s Justice and her firm, Birnberg Peirce. Her work at the centre covers everything from domestic cases to policing scandals involving officers entering relationships while undercover.

In a prescient time for women’s rights, Wistrich is at the forefront of the fight for justice.

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Vicky Wickremeratne’s expertise in defending financial services clients in high reputational risk cases goes far beyond her five years as a partner at Simmons & Simmons.

Prior to returning to Simmons in 2013, she served as managing director and senior counsel in Goldman Sachs’ Hong Kong office. Her six-year in-house stint working on the global bank’s employment legal matters across Asia has proven to be invaluable in understanding and relating to the unique needs and nuances of clients in stressful events.

In 2018, the contentious side of Wickremeratne’s practice was incredibly busy, against a backdrop of growing whistleblowing activities, and harassment and discrimination claims against big banks and financial institutions. As a case in point, she assisted a global retail banking client with two high-value, sensitive litigation cases in 2018.

One of the cases was significant in light of the underlying conduct rule issues and the complexities of litigating issues relating to the new Senior Managers Regime.

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For a lawyer like Samantha Rowe, for whom international dispute resolution work is bread and butter, having a case go to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is about as exciting as it gets.

Having made partner at Debevoise & Plimpton in July, she has spent much of her time since in between London and Qatar.

This was for a case representing the State of Qatar as it sought redress over the human rights impact of the blockade imposed by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt, and included winning an order for provisional measures in proceedings before the ICJ against the UAE, investment arbitrations and claims in other international tribunals. Alongside this, Rowe has been working on precedent-setting cases with the Russian Federation against shareholders in Yukos Oil, up to the value of $14bn (£11bn). These cases are expected to keep Rowe busy well into 2019.

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Ben Parry-Smith celebrated his 10th year as a lawyer at family specialist outfit Payne Hicks Beach (PHB) in 2018, which coincided nicely with his first as a partner at the firm.

The Mishcon de Reya-trained protégé to formidable family law expert Fiona Shackleton had his year mostly dominated by a surge in cases around children, which he describes as being “more important than sorting out money”. This rise has dovetailed with an increase in the internationalisation of his overall practice with roughly 70 per cent of his time working on overseas matters, resting heavily on the relationships in PHB’s global network.

As the international element rises, so too do the complications within his work. Marital issues thrown up include prenup agreements and divorces with little surety given about what the law will look like after Brexit. Only two things in Parry-Smith’s career are certain at this stage: his workload will only increase, and 2018 was another very bright step in a very bright career.

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TLT’s dispute resolution head Chris Owen is a go-to name for litigation around contractual, corporate and engineering disputes. Last February, he was also appointed as TLT’s head of international, tasked with establishing a foreign best friends network in a post-Brexit world.

In the past few months, he has negotiated alliances with up to four firms in the US in an bid to take on more cross-border disclosure claims, resulting in an increasing number of inbound and outbound referrals from the States. As he capitalises on these burgeoning relationships, Owen has also become an instrumental figure in strengthening the value of the firm’s European legal services offering.

This strategic effort has not taken him far from fee-earning. Owen recently wrapped up a long international arbitration case involving a technical engineering dispute in the rail industry and is acting for India’s government in a dispute with Pakistan. The trial starts in June.

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As someone involved in one of the largest and most extensive competition inquiries the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has ever conducted, Gibson Dunn competition partner Ali Nikpay did not have time to stop in 2018.

The proposed Asda-Sainsbury’s merger dominated headlines in September and the probe is due to stretch into a reasonable part of this year. Cases of this size are usually heard by the EU, but due to the domestic nature of this, it is being dealt with on home turf. Nikpay cites it as a test-case for how the CMA might operate post-Brexit.

Few other practices can say they have dealt with more high-profile competition cases over the past three years.

Nikpay’s practice was also brought in on the Ladbrokes-Gala Coral merger, as well as the Euro Car Parts and Andrew Page merger inquiry.

Complementing this work, he also helped set up the Brexit Competition Law Working Group. The group is chaired by Sir John Vickers, former head of the CMA, and helps to shape and develop policy.

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In Japanese, HFW’s shipping and crisis response partner Richard Neylon’s name roughly translates as ‘peaceful argument’. That is the sort of nominative determinism you cannot make up.

Neylon has been working with organisations ranging from the UN to Interpol to help people and companies get out of sticky situations since 2003. His practice focuses on disputes relating to collisions, fires, explosions, groundings and piracy.

Over the course of his career, Neylon has had a hand in freeing more than 1,800 hostages, overseeing the payment of more ransom money than any other person. This year alone he has dealt with the matter of a militia-detained ship in Libya and negotiations over a vessel held with a crew and 700kg of cocaine on board. He currently has 24 ongoing hostage cases.

Now that, in the current climate, the threat from Somali pirates has reduced due to better protection of international shipping routes, helping people guard themselves against the growing trend of cyber extortion is Neylon’s next port of call. His favourite problems to solve are esoteric ones.

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Jennette Newman’s arrival at Clyde & Co from BLM in 2018 was a coup for the global firm in a number of ways. The recruitment of a market-leading casualty partner not only underlined the strategic importance of a national insurance practice for Clydes, but was an astute move in terms of bolstering the talent bench.

Newman is one of the leading casualty lawyers in the country with a slew of catastrophic injury cases to her credit, in which she has acted for insurers and corporates on complex and usually multi-party bodily injury litigation.

Her practice also extends to health and safety regulatory investigations and prosecutions. As the insurance market evolves with more demand for joined-up services and a move away from traditional pillared relationships with clients, Newman will be central to Clyde & Co’s growth in the UK and in the London market in particular.

Her high-profile appointment to lead the Forum of Insurance Lawyers’ newly launched London chapter cements her high profile and will ensure that Newman will be at the forefront of leading the thinking on best legal practice in insurance.

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In a year when gender pay gap stories dominated the press, the biggest story of all centred on the media: the row over remuneration at the BBC. The BBC’s former China editor Carrie Gracie brought a complaint of sex discrimination which resulted in an apology and payout by the BBC – which Gracie donated to the Fawcett Society to support other legal actions. The lawyer behind Gracie’s successful action was Mishcon de Reya partner Jennifer Millins, who acts both for employees and employers – more usually from the financial sector. For Millins, it was an unusual case because of the spotlight on the BBC’s funding from the licence payer and its role in the public life of the UK.

Millins is on maternity leave until mid-2019, but she will continue her prominent part in the debate over pay through her role on Mishcon’s internal learning and thought leadership academy, in which the firm is working with the University of Surrey and King’s College London on a research project that will look into more effective ways of reporting pay gaps.

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TMP Solicitors’ Jacqueline McGuigan wanted to be a social worker, took a legal secretary job to pay the bills and became a lawyer after she kept correcting her bosses’ work. In other words, she is not your conventional solicitor.

She took on the case of Gary Smith in Pimlico Plumbers v Smith in 2011, at a time when the question of employment status was considered dead and buried. Over the past eight years, she has taken it all the way to the Supreme Court, toppling the might of Mishcon de Reya as five judges unanimously agreed that claimant Mr Smith was a Pimlico Plumbers employee during his time working for the company and not, as Pimlico Plumbers was arguing, self-employed.

The phone has not stopped ringing since, and McGuigan is getting all sorts of interesting and meritorious cases through the door. A key one in 2019 revolves around foster carers and their legal rights as workers, sparked by a phone call from a client who saw her on TV.

It has human rights as well as employment considerations and McGuigan has some of the UK’s finest barristers lined up alongside her. Not bad for a sole practitioner.

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JMW partner Nick McAleenan’s practice has benefited from the immensely interesting work generated by the explosion of data breach cases over the last few years, with a mix of privacy cases for individuals and group cases against companies topping the agenda.

McAleenan was the driving force behind action for claimants in the first-ever data-related class action in the UK Court of Appeal.

Operating from JMW’s Manchester office, he acted for a group against Morrisons, in a data breach that has 5,500 claimants so far. Members of the group stand to gain up to £10,000 each if the court rules compensation should be paid. The case has been rumbling on for years and came to a head in October, when the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the claimant.

If the case reaches the compensation stage, much of McAleenan’s time in early 2019 will be consumed with working out how much this is worth. And if it does not, the case could go all the way to the Supreme Court.

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Once again, The Lawyer’s Hot 100, in association with AlixPartners and LexisNexis, gathers together the standout lawyers in the UK over the past year – the most daring, innovative and creative lawyers from in-house, private practice and the Bar.

Over the course of last year, hundreds of nominations poured in from across the legal profession, making the final selection one of the most competitive ever. In 2018 the inclusion of 51 women marked the first time the men have been outnumbered in the Hot 100; this year the pendulum has swung even further and there are 59 women on the list.

As always, the 2019 edition of the list includes a broad spectrum of lawyers: well-known names from the top ranks of the profession; experienced figures who have recently come to prominence after years of hard work; and rising stars whose names we will all get to know much better in the decades to come. Spotting future talent is one of the joys of the Hot 100, so it is pleasing to see that a lawyer who featured in the ‘Young Guns’ category of the Hot 100 2004 is now listed in the ‘Management’ section 15 years later.

Whatever the year, everyone who is named in the Hot 100 has one thing in common: they are the lawyers of the moment. All those on the 2019 list are shaping the legal profession right now; though many already have a distinguished career behind them, no one is included because of past glories.

Some have secured legal firsts in new and exciting areas of law. Others are at the cutting edge of tech. There are management figures taking law firms where law firms have never gone before, in-house counsel redefining what in-house teams should be, litigators fighting the key battles of our age and rainmakers working on the most significant transactions.

Brexit is naturally colouring the workload of many of the lawyers on this year’s list but happily the Hot 100 is one corner of the UK where it does not hold sway. From Sir Cliff Richard to Sergei Skripal; from Weinstein to Windrush, between them the Hot 100 class of 2019 have a hand in many of the biggest stories in the news today.

Congratulations to them all.

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Jamie Maples’ dispute skills were honed during his time as a barrister at 1 Essex Court in the early 2000s. When he left the Bar, he made his way to Weil Gotshal & Manges, where he now leads the City disputes practice.

Last year, Maples led on one of the most significant Islamic finance cases to come before the English courts to date, acting for investors including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs who had lent money to UAE-headquartered Dana Gas. The $700m (£554m) of debt, which was due to mature in October 2017 was never repaid, following claims it was no longer Sharia-compliant.

Having rejected restructuring proposals, Dana Gas has been in a legal battle across multiple jurisdictions challenging the validity of the various agreements and security comprising the bond. The court ruled in favour of the bondholders. This case set a precedent and placed aspects of Islamic finance firmly under the microscope.

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As a specialist in EU law splitting her time between London and Brussels, Bristows partner Sophie Lawrance is set to have arguably the most challenging and transformative year of her career. Did Lawrance think at the start of her working life that she would be working throughout the biggest political event in a generation? Unequivocally, no. Has she relished the opportunity to be in the mixer? Undoubtedly.

Though Brexit looks set to dominate this year, her 2018 focused heavily on acting for Chinese telecoms business ZTE in a wide-ranging IP dispute that will likely rumble on for some time yet.

Judgment on this case is expected this year, with Lawrance hopeful the outcome will vindicate her hard work over the course of last year.

With competition cases steadily growing in volume at the European Commission, another of Lawrance’s clients – Google – has seen a number of these brought against it. A claim from Hausfeld-represented price comparison business Foundem is due to be heard in 2019, giving Lawrance two major cases to focus on already.

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Bates Wells Braithwaite’s Paul Jennings is an employment lawyer working at the forefront of cases relating to the gig economy.

One of his most significant instructions of last year was acting for James Farrar and Yaseen Aslam, the test claimants in the landmark employment rights case against the global transportation company Uber.

Jennings won in the Court of Appeal in December and the case is now destined for the Supreme Court.

Being part of a team that shapes the foundations of employment law – the first thing you learn at law school – and affects such a huge number of people is, he says, very exciting.

Jennings has more gig economy cases in the Employment Tribunal and Court of Appeal coming up in the year ahead, alongside his non-contentious work acting for organisations as diverse as charities and hedge funds.

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Jill Greenfield attended a comprehensive in Stoke-on-Trent, with a father who was a joiner and a mother who worked on a fruit stall, and never expected to become a lawyer. She came into the profession wanting to fight for justice for individuals. And as the head of Fieldfisher’s personal injury department, she gets to do just that, handling some of the most high-profile cases of 2018.

Greenfield is running the first civil claims against Harvey Weinstein and The Weinstein Company in the English courts for historic alleged sexual assaults on behalf of former employees. For many of the alleged UK victims, she was the first person they had spoken to about their experience, and says it is a humbling experience to be able to use the law to seek access to justice. With a practice like Greenfield’s, you never know what is going to come through the door next. She always acts for victims and – having previously successfully campaigned to change terrorism laws to support victims injured abroad – last year stepped up to act for those injured in the Westminster Bridge and Finsbury Park Mosque terror attacks.

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Travers Smith litigator Heather Gagen wasted no time in making her mark at the firm after hopping across the Holborn viaduct in 2015 from Hogan Lovells.

In less than two years, she had already been promoted to partner and was one of four Travers women to make the cut that year. This, combined with her rapid ascendancy to partnership at just eight years qualified, has made her a role model to associates at the firm. Alongside the day job, Gagen juggles a role on Travers’ graduate recruitment committee and volunteers at a family law clinic as part of the firm’s pro bono activities.

But back to the fee-earning. As a fresh-faced partner, Gagen was immediately appointed as the lead litigator for Japanese smart card chip producer Renesas, in a follow-on and standalone damages claim brought by Vodafone.

Working alongside the firm’s head of competition Nigel Seay, she will be back in the High Court next autumn to fight Renesas’ corner. With just one follow-on damages judgment so far handed down in the UK, this is a growing area of law in which firms are keen to invest.

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In her first full calendar year as a Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan partner, Liesl Fichardt has proven her considerable worth to the decade-old London outpost.

The former Clifford Chance head of tax investigations and disputes arrived at Quinn Emanuel (QE) as the first dedicated tax partner in the London office in late 2017, handling some of the largest cases in this field globally.

Her work on the Acacia Mining dispute in Africa is estimated to be worth an aggregated $200bn (£158bn), with more than 95 separate issues thought to be ongoing at the time of writing. In true QE spirit, Fichardt was told that 12 cases being brought as part of the Acacia dispute were unwinnable by local counsel. She then went on to win 11, with the last one awaiting judgment.

Fichardt is keen to expand QE’s London tax practice this year. There will undoubtedly be a greater number of associates joining to bolster that practice, though it could also take the form of a partner lateral. Watch your tax teams, London, Fichardt’s leading the charge.

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Des Collins makes his second appearance in the Hot 100. This year, it’s for his work on the Infected Blood Inquiry, examining why thousands of haemophiliac NHS patients were given contaminated blood and blood products throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It is the UK’s worst peacetime tragedy.

The Government finally announced the opening of a full, statutory public inquiry in 2018, but it only came about thanks to the tireless work of campaigners. They found a saviour in Collins, the first lawyer to take them, and the evidence, seriously. He took on the case immediately and was instrumental in bringing it to wider public attention and forcing the Government’s hand.

Collins himself is representing more than 1,200 victims, families and campaign groups at the inquiry and more than 500 people at the concurrent group litigation. Though a group litigation guru, the nature of this case is on a different scale to anything he has done before: firstly because it does not stem from a single event but rather problems that developed over many years; secondly because everyone involved has a story that needs to be told. Some have been waiting 30 years for their voice to be heard.

The Department of Health and Social Care seems intent on fighting the victims and their families, meaning Collins and his clients’ struggle for justice is likely to go on for years.

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Last year, Charles Brasted was sorting out two of the biggest concerns for Londoners; Brexit and the potential loss of Uber. With Transport for London stripping the taxi app of its City licence in 2017, the Hogan Lovells litigator was called in to save the day in one of the most high-profile battles of the past 12 months. Over the summer, the firm successfully won a 15-month probationary licence for Uber, a flagship client of Brasted’s for over six years. There is also an ongoing judicial review on the decision, proving that its disagreements with London’s black cabs contingent are far from over.

Promoted to partner just five years ago, Brasted has carved a reputation for himself as the firm’s public law guru and is a key member of its Brexit taskforce as a result. But it is away from the media fanfare that Brasted has had the sweetest of victories. Hogan Lovells’ pro bono unit sent him to overturn a UK government decision threatening the closure of a court in Chichester. He won, in an important access-to-justice victory for not-for-profit organisation West Sussex Resolution.

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