Hugh James has bolstered its Contested Wills Trusts and Estates team in response to rising client demand. The team has grown to eight in 2021 – through the appointment of five specialist lawyers across the firm’s offices in London and Cardiff – with more senior hires set to arrive in the coming months.

Earlier this year, the top 100 UK firm appointed Senior Associate Sarah Bolt to its London City office from offshore firm Harneys. With over a decade of experience covering contentious aspects of insolvency, wills, trusts and estate litigation, Sarah has worked on numerous high-value, complex and cross-border trust and estate disputes. She has a specialist focus on charity legacy disputes and has acted for clients such as CRUK, BHF, RNIB, the Donkey Sanctuary, Save the Children, Macmillan Cancer Support, the Alzheimer’s Society and RNLI.

During the summer, Kieran Forsyth also joined the London team as an Associate, from Magic Circle firm, Linklaters, and manages a caseload of individual and business clients comprising both high net worth contentious and non-contentious matters. Kieran’s practice includes a particular focus on cryptocurrency and digital assets.

Sarah and Kieran are supported in the City by Solicitor Oliver Rees, who qualified into the team in September, following the successful completion of his training contract at the firm.

Meanwhile, in Cardiff, Solicitor Joseph Brophy arrived in May from a specialist Court of Protection firm and bolsters the team’s growing Court of Protection Disputes practice. Prior to joining the firm, Joseph specialised in Court of Protection Property and Affairs Deputyship matters, working for an OPG Panel Deputy.

Likewise, adding to the team’s cross-border expertise, the Cardiff team was boosted by the addition of solicitor, Matthew Nester, who spent much of his career working as a Trusts Manager in Bermuda before joining the team.

Partner and Head of the team, Roman Kubiak, said today:

“I’m delighted to welcome such an impressive cohort of specialist lawyers to the team. Their invaluable experience helps bolster our status as one of the leading national teams for this type of work and builds on our increasing London presence. I have no doubt that they will help us continue to build on the significant achievements we’ve made over the last few years in the offshore, high net worth and charity sectors.”

He added:

“We’re also excited to be developing our contested Court of Protection work. Sadly, we are seeing a real increase in disputes involving the most vulnerable people in society and I’m proud knowing that we have the expertise to provide essential assistance to those who desperately need it.”

This year, the calibre of the Contested Wills, Trusts and Estates team has been recognised in the latest leading directories of UK law firms – with rankings in The Legal 500 for the London team, and top-ranked alone in Wales for the department, with sources commenting that they are “[the] best contentious estates and trusts team in Wales. One of the top five in the West of England and capable of matching other national firms in heavier weight work”. Likewise, Roman Kubiak is the only ranked individual for Private Wealth Disputes in Wales in this year’s Chambers and Partners. It’s good news all round for the firm, which is also named in the latest Times list of the 200 Best law firms in the UK.