Tatham & Co win Law Society’s Small Law Firm of the Year Award

Big news for the firm was that we recently won the Law Society Award for Small Firm of the Year 2021. This was mainly for our work around helping owners whose ships were attacked and hijacked during the last year and in previous years building on the success we had with the Chennai 6. The firm continues to grow, and we have had several high profile cases in the High Court in London as well as success in arbitrations for clients across the maritime and insurance community.

We are building on our reputation for dealing with ships caught in complex environments including Venezuela, Yemen, Indonesia and of course West Africa.  At the height of the pandemic, international flights into the area stopped completely and Nigeria itself banned the movement of people across state lines. This gave rise to significant challenges at every stage of the hostage release process.

We dedicated the win to the men and women who serve on the world’s commercial fleets and who don’t deserve to be facing these sort of risks as they go about their daily working lives.

Anyone involved in the business of hijackings knows that it is a team effort and the hostages are not released without that team doing everything right particularly those that actually interface with the pirates themselves.

We were really pleased that our efforts captured the imagination of the judges. Having watched and heard from other winners during the course of the ceremony, it was humbling to see how the legal world had stepped up in the pandemic to deliver legal services to some really vulnerable groups in innovative ways. Everyone shortlisted last night had a story to tell.