The Johnson Partnership

In recent months, the Magistrates’ Court and Crown Court at Nottingham have been particularly heavily populated with Eastern European lorry drivers whose vehicles have been fitted with tachograph override systems.

The systems are capable of preventing a tachograph record from showing several hours of journey time each day.

The Trowell and Beeston Testing Centres have recently detected substantial numbers of wagons from Eastern Europe, whose drivers have been operating these devices.

Whilst the authorities always seek to prosecute the companies who own the vehicles, it is inevitably the drivers who are in the front line.

With Polish and Romanian speakers within our fee-earning team, we have been particularly well placed to look after drivers who found themselves before a court for the first time in their lives. Inevitably, we have had to come to terms with the various systems that are employed to override the tachograph.  Not all prosecutions result in guilty pleas and not all of the assertions made by the prosecuting authorities stand close examination.

If you know of somebody who finds themselves before the court for this sort of offence please do not hesitate to give us a call, whether the case is in the East Midlands or further afield. Our experienced staff will always be happy to help and are prepared to travel.

On 4^th October 2017 an exclusive basement party in a renowned Nottingham restaurant was held to celebrate the 70^th birthday of James Harrison Beck.

With Judges, QC’s, leading and junior counsel, solicitors, trainees, and clerks from within the firm and beyond, the guest list truly sparkled.

When Jimmy founded The Johnson Partnership’s Higher Rights team in April 2002 he was one of the very few members of the Bar to work in-house with a firm of Defence solicitors. Since that time he has suggested and helped us grow a substantial and successful White Collar Department as well as one of the most highly regarded teams of in-house advocates in the country.

All of this of course follows on a glittering career at the Independent Bar as well as huge success elsewhere within the Metropolitan area.

It was lovely to be able to spend an evening with Jimmy, Val, and so many close friends who were prepared to step out and party even though it was officially a school night!

Happy Birthday Jim! As you would say, “Whatever would we do without you!”

After years of hard endeavour in The Johnson Partnership’s White Collar Department, we are sorry to announce the departure of Charlotte Cullen who is heading for an offshore haven.

A rising talent within the firm, who just commenced a training contract with The Johnson Partnership, Charlotte Cullen has been head-hunted to work for a firm of civil and criminal fraud specialists based in Jersey. A great package of incentives and excellent prospects mean that no-one could stand in Charlotte’s way.  We wish her all the best and mourn her passing.

As well as an excellent trainee, Charlotte was rapidly becoming the firm’s social secretary, a role which is now vacant. Her tour de force was the organisation of the recent 70^th birthday celebrations for in-house Counsel Jimmy Beck, from whom Charlotte confesses she has learned a great deal about law and libation.

Good luck Charlotte, we’ll miss you!

It gives us genuine and unalloyed pleasure to announce that Charlotte Cullen is The Johnson Partnership’s newest trainee solicitor.

Charlotte started with us on 9^th September 2013 after a three month trip to Thailand which still remains veiled in mystery.  Recruited as a member of the Business Defence and Fraud Team, Charlotte has always remained loyal to White Collar Crime and paper-heavy cases.

Having swept all before her in terms of exams and accreditations, Charlotte also can boast a rare distinction of having been robbed by and rescued by a Johnson client in the course of the same evening.

We are sure that Leicester City’s Championship winning season was all down to Charlotte’s enthusiastic support and so we decided the time had come for us to back a winner.

Good luck Charlotte, although frankly we doubt that you will need it.

We have had time to reflect recently on how important bars have been to The Johnson Partnership. Our original business planning took place in several licensed bars. As the years have gone by we have spent increasing amounts of time in coffee bars. Much of our workplace endeavour is designed to move people from one side of some bars to the other.

Nevertheless, we never thought that we would become heavily involved in helping a stream of young people get their first foothold at the Bar as pupil barristers.

In times gone by, Vicky Sheppard-Jones moved from our Crown Court Department to become a successful pupil and tenant at Carmelite Chambers in London. In more recent times, James Olphert successfully found pupillage with the Crown Prosecution Service having worked with us for a relatively short period of time.

Helen Towers has worked with us both as an employee and a freelance police station advisor, and we are delighted to say that she is to start pupillage at Dere Street Chambers later this year.

The highly regarded Rebecca Coleman worked with us at The Johnson Partnership for about 2 ½ years, assisting in the Crown Court Department and advising in police stations. Rebecca is now a successful second six pupil at No 1 High Pavement Chambers in Nottingham.

We have received the brilliant news that Anthony Pettengell, a former valued member of the firm’s Business Defence and Fraud Department, has succeeded in his search for pupillage and is to join Fountain Chambers in Middlesbrough.

Our most recent success story centres around Rebecca Da Silva, who after a little over seven months with The Johnson Partnership has secured pupillage at Citadel Chambers in Birmingham, starting April 2018.

By offering day to day contact with members of the Bar, as well as solicitor HCAs, we have tried to ensure that all our would-be pupils are in the strongest possible position when it comes to making applications to Chambers. Opportunities for advocacy before judges in chambers and tribunals ensure that staff do not lose the skills that they have developed while mooting and during the BPTC. Familiarity with Crown Court documentation also means that at interview our staff are able to talk on an intensely practical level to the interviewing panels.

All in all, whilst it may not assist in our staff retention statistics, we are delighted to have been able to help some marvellous young talent along the way.

DMJ

Well, it’s happened! The Lincoln office is finally open for business. Phone lines installed. Desks erected. Filing cabinets primed and ready for action.

It is hard to express just how exciting it is to start a new office from scratch. The last time that The Johnson Partnership opened an office that wasn’t linked to an existing practice was July 1st 1990 when we first opened as a firm.

Taking us back to those early days of counting up how many police station cases we have dealt with and court appearances we have attended by week. Horrible disappointments of case-less days and the wild excitement of having to bring in more people to cope with the sudden influx are almost too much to bear.

The unbridled enthusiasm of Vicki Clayton and her team is a joy to behold. There can be no group of legal professionals who are as desperately dedicated to providing a class client service as The Johnson Partnership Lincoln squad.

The desire to make something work both from scratch is undoubtedly one of the most powerful drivers in any service industry.

With help available from the Grimsby, Scunthorpe, Mansfield, and Nottingham offices the Lincoln team know there is a massive reservoir of help at hand as well as a big crowd waiting to cheer their success.

Our new Lincoln office can now be unveiled. After extensive research throughout the lovely Historic City, we are delighted to announce that our new office will be opening at Unit 3, Waterside South, Lincoln LN5 7DU.

Positioned within yards of the busy High Street, the office is beautifully positioned between Lincoln Magistrates’ Court on the High Street and Lincoln Crown Court and the Castle.

Staff will be well positioned to make rapid responsive journeys to Lincoln’s busy custody suite situated up at West Parade.

The office affords easy access for all members of the public as well private interviewing accommodation to ensure that instructions can be taken in a timely and discreet manner.

In October 2015 The Johnson Partnership were successful in all its bids under the Government’s two tier criminal legal aid tender. We won one of the four contracts for Nottinghamshire, one of the five for Derbyshire and one of the seven for South Yorkshire.

A little over a year on, and The Johnson Partnership has again been successful in our tender bid for the 2017 crime contract.

On this occasion the country has been divided into smaller bid zones. Rather than county wide areas, the Government has asked for tenders for offices in specific towns and cities.

We are delighted to announce that we now hold criminal contracts for Nottingham, Mansfield, Derby, Chesterfield, Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster, Scunthorpe, Grimsby and Lincoln.

We would like to give special thanks to our senior partner Ian Boddy for his hard work in preparing the bid and keeping up-to-date with the ever changing forms provided to applicants by the Legal Aid Agency. As part of the bid process Ian completed no fewer than 23 supervisor declaration forms as well as providing a host of information about specific office sites and the firm in general.

Since 2006 it has been open to Crown and Magistrates’ Courts to make Food Hygiene Protection Orders. New regulations in 2013 have updated the scope of the orders and the process for making them.

When any inspection of premises gives rise to a food hygiene prosecution it may well be that a Food Hygiene Protection Order will be considered.

Whenever there is a prosecution forthcoming an issue arises as to whether the business or a particular individual should be prosecuted. A Food Hygiene Protection Order will rely against a particular individual who can be said to be the “Food Business Operator” and therefore susceptible to the making of such an order.

An order can prevent an individual from being involved in the management of a food sales or food preparation business.

It is important that anyone attending before the court as a result of a food hygiene prosecution is in a position to mount a serious and coherent argument against the making of such an order. Training, education, new experience, learning the ropes elsewhere, are all ways in which it may be possible to convince a court that wrongs have been put right.

Where a Food Hygiene Protection Order has been made it is open to the individual against whom it has been made to apply for it to be lifted, once six months has elapsed. A successful application will see the order lifted forthwith. An unsuccessful application means that it is impossible to re-apply for the next three months.

If you find yourself in danger of a Food Hygiene Protection Order being made against you, it is important that you are well prepared and able to give the best possible account of yourself. Call our Mr Johnson straight away on 07971-159003 for urgent advice and immediate help.

The arrival in the ranks of assistant solicitors at The Johnson Partnership of Devon Broome has brought a fresh injection of enthusiastic youth to our Nottingham Magistrates’ Court team as well as to the prison law department.

Having agreed to stay with the firm on qualification, Devon is to split her time between prison law and blue collar work.

Over the past four years Devon has built up a real expertise in representing detainees at adjudications and before the Parole Board. She is persuasive both as a written and oral advocate on behalf of her many prison law clients.

Since June, Devon has been demonstrating the same skill on a daily basis in the Magistrates’ Courts of the East Midlands. When asked about her time as a trainee, she said “it’s amazing how much you can absorb when you are working alongside people who are in the Magistrates’ Court day in and day out”.

The speed, skill and understanding with which Devon’s approach to her new challenges is a testimony to her own ability and how successful the firm’s shared works based policy has been. By listening to the experiences of others and asking questions along the way, Devon was able to make the most of her Magistrates’ Court training seat. Some early complex sentencing hearings might have been expected to challenge most new recruits, but Devon took them in her stride.

We have all been swept along by Devon’s whirlwind personality and look forward to watching her blow the opposition away.