Professor Michael Zander KC reflects on his achievements and controversies during six decades in the law, in this week’s NLJ. Through his work, he has played a key role in the movements to set up law centres, establish the duty solicitor scheme, propose the Human Rights Act, and much more.
Interviewed by journalist Grania Langdon-Down, Prof Zander KC, access to justice champion, author and legal critic, recalls he drove an ice cream van to help fund his university studies, worked for a Wall Street law firm and then for Tony Benn when the late Labour politician was renouncing his peerage. Zander became a solicitor but swapped to academia and gained renown as a prominent critic of the way the legal profession is structured. As well as his work as a professor at the LSE, he was a legal correspondent at The Guardian and wrote as Justinian at the Financial Times.
His articles lit a fuse that led to two royal commissions in consecutive years. Today, he continues his legal writing career as a columnist at NLJ.
As noted in the citation on Zander’s award of Honorary Doctorate of Laws by King’s College, London in 2010, ‘The central mission of his professional life has been to make the justice system work better’.
To read more about Zander’s extraordinary life and career, see here.
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