Author: Purple Brolly

Queen Eleanor (1122-1204), mother of King Richard I ‘the Lionheart’ (1157-99), ruled England in his absence on Crusade and she established maritime law circa 1190, a concept she had observed on a French island. As Britain’s sea-faring activities increased in the following centuries, practitioners of this law formed an important, specialist sector of the legal profession.

Maritime, or admiralty, law was initially solely concerned with ships engaged in import and export. It now encompasses all issues related to ships and shipping, including ownership, the crew, collisions, piracy, salvage, carriage of cargo and passengers, unmanned vessels and wrecks, environmental liability and pollution. Territorial matters are dealt with by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

It is considered far better to settle disputes through arbitration than to take them to the Admiralty Court and the London Maritime Arbitrators Association is the world leader in this. A ship itself can be arrested and detained by a Customs Officer if it is seen to be the ‘instrument of mischief’ in a particular incident. It may need to be sold to cover the claim but if it has sunk or is otherwise unavailable, a ‘sister ship’ under the same ownership can be arrested instead.

(Image: Carl Davies at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Solicitors are the British citizen’s first port-of-call for any legal matter. That could be moving house, determining custody of children, dealing with a deceased person’s estate or a dispute with an employer or a neighbour, for instance. Some of the simpler things can be done online nowadays, but using a solicitor is generally the preferred option for the more complex procedures, like criminal litigation.

As the range of legalities is so wide, many solicitors specialise in one field, such as conveyancing. Businesses also use solicitors and may employ them in-house to work on specific matters relating to tax or corporate regulations.

Many people choose a solicitor on recommendation by friends or family and cost is always a factor because their fees are often regarded as expensive. To counter this, since the 1990s there have been ‘no-win-no-fee’ deals which apply to cases where some kind of financial compensation is being claimed. The idea is that if the solicitor fails to extract any payment from an allegedly culpable individual or company for, say, an injury, then there is no fee charged. If the solicitor succeeds, however, then the law states that their fee must not be more than 25% of the moneys received.

(Image: Jaggery at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)