Edward Fennell’s LEGAL DIARY
Diary news plus insights, commentary and appointments from the legal world
30 January 2026
Editorial contact: fennell.edward@yahoo.com
SHORT THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: AI Requires More Qualified People
Amongst the many ways in which AI is changing the way the legal business operates – notably in areas such as reviewing and comparing documents – it might also be stimulating growth in the qualifications ancillary to the law.
For example, there is expanding demand on conveyancing and probate law firms to boost the ratio of qualified to unqualified staff. Given this pressure Claire Richardson, director of authorisations and new business at the Council for Licensed Conveyancers has said, “The safest approach is to say, ‘The more qualified individuals we’ve got, the better we stand out’.”
The point is that with technology taking on administrative roles “You can get new staff straight down to the legal work from day one and start them learning”, according to Connor O’Dell, an associate at Swiitch, the conveyancing arm of Shoosmiths. “They don’t have to go through three years of progressing through all the administration roles and you can have another conveyancer on your hands in a couple of years.”
Where AI is leading the legal secor still remains to be seen but clearly there are many UPs as well as DOWNs to come.
The LegalDiarist
In this edition
+ LEGAL DIARY OF THE WEEK
GIBSON DUNN DUN DEAL
IT’s THE END OF JAN – HOWS IT COOKING UP SO FAR?
RAINER HUGHES FOUNDER JUST KEEPS ON GOING
YIPPIE IP
+ CONTRIBUTED ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Policing Online Posts by Nathan Seymour-Hyde
+ LEGAL COMMENT OF THE WEEK
on courts expansion, school attendance, equal pay for ethnic minorities, the Mortgage Lenders’ handbook, the arrival of commonhold.
+ APPOINTMENTS OF THE WEEK
at Farrer & Co and Andersen LLP
LEGAL DIARY OF THE WEEK
GIBSON DUNN DUN DEAL
USA-UK relations might be a bit wobbly right now – not least because the Prez has just indicated that he is beating a retreat from Western Europe’s defence – but at least some American lawyers are still expressing a wish to be on this side of the Atlantic.
Take Gibson Dunn, for example, which has just announced that it will be leaving its Telephone House office in Temple Avenue and moving to the newly developed One Exchange Square in Bishopsgate. Plush though Telephone House is the visitors to the new offices will notice a difference. For a start One Exchange Square is about twice the size and gleaming after its makeover. Plus – and we’ve checked out the estate agent involved in the deal – it has impressive credentials in terms of it specification (as detailed below). Plus Biodiversity and greenery are embedded inside and out.
Rob Carr and Osma Hudda, as Co-Partners in charge of Gibson Dunn’s London office, are besides themselves with excitement. “It’s fitting that One Exchange Square is a redesigned space rather than an entirely new structure—it mirrors our nearly 50-year presence in London,” pointed out Hudda. “We’ve modernized, adapted, and grown while maintaining our identity and culture. Moving to One Exchange Square is the next chapter in our story in the city.”
Certainly the firm has done London proud by more than doubling its London lawyer headcount from 84 in 2020 to 218 in 2025. Meanwhile its partnership increased from 31 to 49. “London remains a critical market for Gibson Dunn,” said Barbara Becker, Chair and Managing Partner of Gibson Dunn. “We have grown our presence here tremendously in recent years, and this new space will allow us to continue to do so for years to come.”
Let’s just hope that no trumpeting gets in the way.
(You want those amazing specs? Here they are-BREEAM Outstanding -WELL Platinum-NABERS 5.5* rating -NZC ENBOD yes -NZC OPERATIO yes. Impressive, eh?)
IT’s THE END OF JAN – HOW’S IT COOKING UP SO FAR?
One month into the New Year how are things shaping up for the litigation business? With an international scene of some uncertainty and trends in areas such as fraud on the rise the team at boutique commercial firm Cooke, Young & Keidan (Band 1 ranked in Chambers & Partners FinTech 2026 for Crypto-Asset Disputes) sat down to distill how they saw things going.
“A key trend we expect to see in 2026 is tougher economic conditions driving more disputes, particularly shareholder disputes,” said Sinead O’Callaghan, the firm’s Managing Partner. “ In squeezed markets, disagreements become more likely, which often leads to litigation as a consequence.”
Kajal Patel, Counsel, pointed to the vulnerability of some businesses due to what you might describe as ‘bad actors’.
“In companies with complex shareholder structures,” she said, “we’re increasingly seeing minority shareholders orchestrate a chain or chains of corporate events that allows them to ultimately gain effective control of the company, thus enabling them to misappropriate assets or direct the company in a way that prejudices other shareholders.”
Jon Felce,a Partner, endorsed that problem. “Rogue directors and shareholders remain a feature of these disputes,” he said.
So should disputes be resolved through arbitration or litigation? Well, it depends…Mikhail Vishnyakov, Partner, observed that “Greater public access to court documents in commercial claims is a trend to watch in 2026… it could influence commercial litigation more generally, prompting parties to maintain confidentiality by selecting arbitration.”
And then, of course, there is AI which is likely to inspire disputes. “We can expect to see more disputes around how AI models are trained, deployed, utilised and governed,” commented Associate Andrew Woolsey.
So there we have it – lots to get on with.
RAINER HUGHES FOUNDER JUST KEEPS ON GOING
I am grateful to ‘Today’s Family Lawyer’(TFL) for the story of Brian Hughes the founder of Rainer Hughes (offices in Essex and London) who is still hammering away at family mediation having just reached the tender age of 90!. In short he is a model for the argument that doing the thing you love keeps you fit and alive. As TFL points out “His passion for the law and dedication to his clients have never waned.”
Says Hughes, “I feel incredibly lucky to have reached this milestone. I cannot think of many of my original contemporaries who have lived as long as myself and I know of none who have wanted to continue to work beyond 70 years of age. My work has always been a source of great satisfaction to me and I have never felt that I wanted to retire from it.And, as someone heavily involved in assisting fellow solicitors, and members of the public with their legal affairs through my work and my involvement in District Law Societies and the Law Society itself at Chancery Lane, I feel that I have made a worthwhile contribution to the profession and to society.”
Maybe significantly Hughes qualified as a family mediator in 1995 at the age of 60 when many lawyers are already preparing for retirement. But this new role clearly gave him an extended lease of life. Imran Essa, a partner at Rainer Hughes, commented,“Brian is an absolute inspiration for us all. His experience, insight and work ethic continue to shape the culture of the firm.”
In 2025 Rainer Hughes was rated No1 VAT and Tax Law firm in England by Global Law Experts.
YIPPIE IP
Now here’s a thing – although once you think about it there’s nothing surprising in it at all.
According to just-published research from from Marks & Clerk a gulf is developing in the UK energy sector in the race for investment between businesses which are securing their Intellectual Property (IP) and those which are not.
Of course this gives rise to the inevitable ‘chicken and egg’ question of which comes first. But the report reveals that patent-backed energy companies raised £8.09 billion in investment between 2015 and 2025 – a smacking £840 million more than the £7.25 billion secured by companies who wee without patent filings.
“Investor selectivity continues to intensify, with capital increasingly flowing towards companies that can demonstrate credible innovation supported by protected IP,” says Marks & Clerk. “Patent-owning companies secured an average of £4.81 million per funding round, compared with just £3.63 million for non-patent-filing businesses. For investors, patents provide clearer pathways to improved return on investment by signalling scalability, competitive advantage and long-term commercial potential.”
The report also highlights the wider economic impact of IP-backed growth with patent-backed energy companies accounting for 63% of job creation in the sector in the past two years. Despite challenging macroeconomic conditions, this points to sustained business growth and economic health since 2015.
It is no great surprise that London is attracting more venture-driven, rapid scale funding but, maybe surprisingly, it has a lower proportion of patent filing companies than other UK regions. Scotland and the wider UK show a more balanced distribution between patent-filing and non-patent-filing companies. However as Marks & Clerk point out, “The findings come at a pivotal moment for the sector, following the UK Government’s recent renewables auction, which injected £204 million of public investment to incentivise domestic jobs and support clean energy growth.”
Andrew Docherty,the Partner and Head of Energy and Environment at Marks & Clerk, commented: “IP continues to provide companies with a strategic advantage, enabling them to shape their commercial direction with confidence and clarity. Investors are increasingly focused on the presence of patents and the role they play in supporting long-term growth and global expansion.”
CONTRIBUTED ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Policing Online Posts
By Nathan Seymour-Hyde
Police handling of online posts has come under intense media scrutiny in recent months, following widely reported cases that have raised serious questions about the use of arrest in online speech investigations. There is an increasing sense that officers are being drawn into policing culture-war disputes.
Many of the problems the police face in this area arise from a misunderstanding of the offence most commonly considered in online messaging investigations – section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. The threshold for what is “grossly offensive” is significantly higher than many officers appear to appreciate. Parliamentary guidance makes clear that messages must be more than merely “offensive, shocking or disturbing”, and that the “expression of unpopular opinions, banter or humour – even if distasteful or painful – is not criminal”. If this threshold were applied properly, many controversial investigations would likely never have happened.
Nevertheless, a structural issue remains within the legislation. An offence is also committed by sending a “menacing” message, a term that is poorly defined and open to overly broad interpretation. This has contributed to disproportionate investigations of ordinary disputes that should never reach the criminal threshold. A clearer statutory definition of “menacing” would help prevent this overreach.
This complexity is compounded by the fragmented way the law approaches online speech. The same words shouted in a public place may be prosecuted under the Public Order Act, expressed online under the Communications Act or Malicious Communications Act, or, in more serious cases, under the Online Safety Act. If repeated and directed at an individual, the conduct may instead fall under the Protection from Harassment Act. The result is a patchwork system in which identical conduct can trigger different offences depending on context and medium.
Perceptions of what is “grossly offensive”, and the threshold for a criminal offence, will inevitably change over time. Case law makes clear that the test is objective, assessed by reference to the standards of an open and just multi-racial society. In practice, however, officers are required to make subjective decisions early in an investigation, often where the line is a fine one. Proper training and clearer guidance are therefore essential.
Parliament should revisit the definition of “menacing”, which currently sets too low a bar. Without a clearer understanding of these thresholds, officers will continue to be placed in the role of arbiters of online speech, and disproportionate arrests are likely to persist.
Nathan-Seymour-Hyde is a Private Crime partner at Reeds Solicitors LLP
LEGAL COMMENT OF THE WEEK
TOPIC: The announcement by Minister for Courts, Sarah Sackman KC MP of a courts expansion plan inorder to deliver speedier justice
COMMENT BY: Nick Gova, Head of Family, Spector Constant & Williams
“The Government’s announcement of further court expansion is welcome, but it should not distract from the dire reality practitioners and families face daily. Turning four former Nightingale Courts into permanent fixtures and adding 11 courtrooms nationwide is a sticking‑plaster solution to a system still buckling under intolerable delays.
“We are told this will ‘end interminable delays’ for victims, yet the very need to convert temporary pandemic courts into permanent sites shows how far the justice system has fallen behind. The fact that the Crown Court backlog resulted in victims waiting years for their hearings, underlines a crisis that cannot be solved by estate expansion alone.
“Family justice in particular continues to suffer from chronic listing delays, ageing infrastructure, and a lack of judicial capacity, issues no new building can fix without deep structural reform. Investment helps, but until government tackles the systemic causes of delay head‑on, the promise of ‘speedier justice’ will remain an aspiration rather than a reality.”
TOPIC: The Government’s announcement that pupils should not automatically be sent home if they are suspended from school in England and could, instead, remain on site
COMMENT BY: Ane Vernon, Partner, Payne Hicks Beach
“Recent data show that suspensions in England have risen markedly. While suspensions remain a necessary and legally recognised disciplinary tool, sending pupils home poses practical and safeguarding challenges, particularly where children are left unsupervised.
“The Secretary of State’s announcement that on-site suspensions should be preferred over home-based suspension (save in cases of violence) seems to be a good idea in principle but it creates additional burdens on schools when the sector already suffers with staffing and funding pressures. Whilst the DfE’s media briefing expressly states that internal suspensions are not the same as isolation, I am concerned that in practice we will see an increased use of pupils being placed in seclusion rooms – a practice which raises its own safeguarding and human‑rights concerns.”
TOPIC: The Government’s failure to provide a timeline on when the right to equal pay for ethnic minorities and disabled people will be enshrined into law (as promised in Labour’s manifesto)
COMMENT BY: Rena Magdani, Partner and National Head of Employment, Freeths
“Whilst the passage of legislation in this area may seem slow, some employers are being proactive in this area by collating (and in some cases, publishing) data about their ethnicity and disability pay gaps and setting out actions they are taking to close the gap. As with gender pay gap reporting, the first issue is to identify the issue and then the important action is to take steps to reduce the gap.”
TOPIC: UK Finance’s charging model for the new Mortgage Lenders’ Handbook platform, which will see conveyancers having to pay a £50 annual fee, per user to access it
COMMENT BY: The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEX)
“CILEX supports efforts to modernise the Mortgage Lenders’ Handbook, but the proposed charging model risks landing conveyancing lawyers with an unavoidable new bill. Because the Handbook is mandatory when acting for lenders, an individual user fee would amount to a compulsory cost of doing business, with no realistic alternative.
“That leaves firms facing a stark choice: absorb the cost at a time when conveyancing margins are already under strain or pass it on to clients and push up the cost of moving home yet again. Either option adds financial pressure in a sector where affordability is already stretched.
“Passing the fee on is not without risk. If handled incorrectly, it could raise regulatory questions around how client money is held and accounted for, including anti-money laundering considerations.
“We also want clear answers on whether lenders will face equivalent charges, or whether conveyancers alone are being asked to foot the bill.”
TOPIC: The proposed Draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act
COMMENT BY: Richard Robinson, Partner, Hägen Wolf
“The Government has published a bill which, if brought into force, will significantly affect the owners of ground rent portfolios and long leasehold flats.
The major changes proposed in the Draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill include:
Ground rents capped at £250 a year dropping to a peppercorn (effectively nothing) after 40 years. The sunset farewell to ground rents was predicted by many in the industry, given the balancing act between lowering costs for leaseholders and not radically damaging investment values for freehold investors which could, consequently, damage pension values for many.
The abolition of residential lease forfeiture is no doubt a welcome change for leaseholders, who will no longer be subject to what many perceive as a landlord’s draconian ability to take back possession of a leased property, over potentially small debts and/or minor breaches of lease.”
COMMENT BY: Jason Tann, Partner, Howard Kennedy
“Keir Starmer has ignored Rachel Reeves’ unusually well-placed concern for the unintended consequences of the measures on institutional investors and announced that the Government will legislate for the reduction of existing residential leasehold ground rents initially to £250 and reducing to nil after 40 years. This is very different to restricting the terms of future leases and will have retrospective effect on agreements already entered into.
“Following on from the changes to enfranchisement valuation provided for in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, the effect of retrospectively changing the terms of existing leases to limit and ultimately remove ground rents is a further substantial transfer of value from freeholders to leaseholders.
“A significant proportion of those freeholders are pension funds holding money for the public sector and personal pension holders who have invested in stable income from ground rents. Some, such as M&G, are already writing down the value of those investments.
“This only marks the start of the legislative process although the Government are targeting the measure coming into force in late 2028. There will be opportunity for pension funds to raise their voices before then and ultimately if it goes through as planned to challenge it.
“A challenge under the right to property enshrined in the Human Rights Act is an avenue that might be open to pension funds and other affected parties if the legislation goes through as planned. Particularly if it does not envisage a compensation scheme for those who lose out. Pension funds will be keeping a close eye on the continuing challenge to the Leasehold & Freehold Reform Act 2024 that may play out in the Courts as this bill makes its way through Parliament.
“Legislating to change private agreements that have already been entered into, and which form the basis of billions of pounds of institutional investment, will be of significant concern to international investors just as confidence is starting to increase in the UK again.”
COMMENT BY: Gary Scott, Property Litigation Partner, Spector Constant & Williams
“The UK Government’s newly announced cap on ground rents will, in practice, materially affect a relatively small minority of leaseholders, likely less than 25% of all those with a ground‑rent obligation. Current government estimates indicate that around 770,000 to 900,000 leaseholders pay more than £250 per year, out of approximately 3.8 million leasehold properties that still carry a ground‑rent charge.
“While this means the vast majority of leaseholders will see no direct financial change from this measure, for the much smaller group of leaseholders still burdened by onerous, doubling, or investment‑linked ground rents, the impact will substantial.
“These leaseholders often face difficulties remortgaging, selling, or affording their homes due to ground‑rent terms that have been widely acknowledged as unfair and sometimes financially hazardous. The cap therefore represents a targeted but meaningful intervention, resolving some of the most acute cases of ground‑rent exploitation and bringing relief to those who have been disproportionately affected by historic leasehold practices.
“The reduction to a peppercorn over a 40 year period also represents a measured and balanced transition which is to the benefit of both leaseholder and landlord.”
LEGAL SECTOR APPOINTMENTS OF THE WEEK
FARRER & CO
Claire Gordon has been appointed to head the Family team at Farrer & Co. Having trained at the firm she has been a partner since 2007. Gordon’s wide experience covers complex, cross-border matters involving trusts, corporate structures and reputational issues. Most notably her recent work has included representing the wife in PN v SA [2025] EWFC 141, a landmark case which resulted in a £230.78 million award (the third-largest divorce award in English legal history). Such is its significance that it is likely to impact on the Family Court’s approach to coercive influence in the future.
Farrer & Co’s family practice has been on a roll for quite some time and with eight partners it is widely regarded as being one of the most experienced teams in the market. As the PN v SA [2025] EWFC 141 case illustrates, it works closely with the firm’s top-ranked Private Wealth group.
“I’m proud to lead such a talented and collegiate group of lawyers,” said Gordon..” We’re known for providing clear-headed advice on some of the most sensitive and high-stakes matters in family law, and the team continues to go from strength to strength. I would like to thank William Massey for stewarding the team with such distinction over many years – it is a privilege to build on that legacy.”
ANDERSEN LLP
Randeep Dhaliwal has been appointed as Director and Head of Research & Development at Andersen LLP within the firm’s Corporate Tax practice. He joins from Kreston Reeves, where he was Head of Research & Development.
Dhaliwal has over 11 years’ experience advising on the full spectrum of corporate tax matters and many years dealing with R&D tax issue. He specialises in corporate tax for both UK and international businesses and groups, and sits on the ICAEW’s Business Tax Committee and R&D working group He has worked on the body’s response to eight of the last ten government consultations on R&D tax relief.
“I’m delighted to be joining the Corporate Tax team at Andersen,” said Dhaliwal. “In recent years there have been significant changes to the legislation around R&D tax, and I’m thoroughly looking forward to working with the team to help clients navigate the complex challenges they face.”
Partner and Head of Corporate Tax, Kevin Hindley, commented, “Randeep is a brilliant addition to the Corporate Tax team, and his strong technical expertise is very welcome during this exciting period of growth for the firm.”
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