News

We are pleased to announce that Duncan Lewis Solicitors has received fantastic recognition in the Chambers & Partners 2019 legal guide with the firm receiving departmental ranking and recognitions in London, Birmingham and Watford, Uxbridge and surrounds. Four of our legal practitioners have been ranked in their respective areas of law and a fifth has been named a ‘Recognised Practitioner’.

It is our great pleasure to announce that, Chambers & Partners UK have assigned top ‘Band 1’ to our criminal defence department based at our head office in Harrow, Middlesex. The department itself is headed by Rubin Italia and Nicholas De Freitas, who supervise a team of 45 solicitors and trainees. Our criminal defence team are all police station representatives, meaning they can represent clients from the outset of a criminal investigation, from road traffic offences up to serious complex crime, including murder, fraud and drug-related offences.

Additionally, our London crime teams, including our Harrow and Dalston offices, and our Family and Matrimonial team based in our Birmingham branch, have been named ‘Recognised Practitioners’. Director Hardeep Dhaliwal leads our criminal defence department in Dalston alongside Harrow’s Rubin Italia and Nicholas De Freitas, whilst Krina Parmar and Richard Gray head the Birmingham family and childcare teams.

Chambers 2019 has also ranked a number of individual specialists, including housing director Dianne Cowie, crime director Rubin Italia and public law director Toufique Hossain all received ”Leading Individual” status, alongside Band 1 solicitor Stefan Vnuk who recently joined the public law team at Harrow. Family and childcare director, Laila Bhunnoo also received praise as a ‘Recognised Practitioner’ for Children: Public Law Matters.

Toufique Hossain was ranked in two different practice areas, namely Administrative & Public Law: Traditional Claimant and Immigration: Human Rights, Asylum and Deportation, for his continued dedicated practice representing the most marginalised communities in calling the executive to account. As a new member of the public law team, Stefan Vnuk brings his Band 1 expertise, with a particular experience in complex cases decided in the higher courts, including the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

Once again, Dianne Cowie has been praised for her keen expertise in Social Housing: Tenant matters, having demonstrated an outstanding practice in homelessness and possession disputes. As the head of our Croydon branch’s housing team, Dianne’s team run fortnightly pro bono clinics for Citizens Advice Merton and Lambeth in Streatham, Mitcham and Morden, whilst she trains the Citizen Advice’s volunteers/advisors in the key issues that affect the range of service-users.

As the co-head of the crime department at our head office, Rubin has maintained his rank, as a highly-regarded expert, specialising in criminal defence for road traffic offences, murder, rape and serious crime, including large-scale drug conspiracies, immigration-related crimes and contested extradition cases involving Class 1 and 2 countries.

With a similar tenacity for her practice, Laila has once again been recognised for her experience acting in children public law matters. Whilst Laila’s practice is broad across all childcare matter, she is often appointed in culturally complex cases – being one of the few Asian specialists in this area - with significant experience representing vulnerable teenagers, often separately from their Guardian, when a conflict has arisen.

Practice Manager Jason Bruce has commented on these outstanding results, stating:

“We are really pleased with this years’ rankings. Our continued recognition from Chambers & Partners across many key areas of law that we specialise in affirms our team’s expertise, dedication and commitment towards our clients and the legal services that we provide nationwide.”

We would like to thank all our referees, clients and professional network for their time providing feedback to Chambers and Partners on our behalf and supporting our work.