Grand job for Alexander

Ann Alexander, joint senior partner at specialist personal injury (PI) firm Alexander Harris, has become the second chairman of the Richard Grand Society, the UK's most exclusive lawyers club.The group, which is for top PI lawyers, has also admitted three new members: Christine Arkless of Archers in Stockton-on-Tees, Hugh Potter of Hugh Potter & Co in Manchester, and Margaret Young of Exeter-based Partlett Kent, taking its total membership to 19.

Membership of the group, modelled on the US's Inner Circle of Advocates founded by Richard Grand, is capped at 25, and is now dependent on practitioners being ten-years qualified and achieving pre-eminence in their field.

In 1998, it dropped a requirement that solicitors need to have recovered at least 5 million in a minimum of five PI or clinical negligence cases to join.Ms Alexander has acted in many high-profile multi-party actions.

At present, she represents 113 relatives of victims of Dr Harold Shipman in a judicial review of the government's decision not to hold a public enquiry.She said wanted to use the group's 'important collective voice' to campaign on issues for the benefit of all PI lawyers, such as Community Legal Service funding in clinical negligence and increasing take-up of mediation.

Sue Allen