LAWYER IN THE NEWS

Who? James Saunders, 53-year-old senior partner of four-partner central London firm Saunders & Co.Why is he in the news? Represented Tony Martin, the East Anglian farmer who last week had his life sentence for murdering a teenage burglar in 1999 reduced to a five-year sentence for manslaughter by the Court of Appeal.

The appeal, which became something of a cause clbre, was substantially based on fresh medical and scientific evidence, maintaining that Martin was suffering from a paranoid personality disorder which lessened his criminal responsibility for the actions.Background: LLB at Leicester University 1968, after which he helped establish London's North Kensington Neighbourhood Law Centre, the first law centre in Britain.

He qualified with the law centre in 1972, where he remained until he established Saunders & Co in 1974 as a specialist criminal law practice.Route to the case: 'With 30 years' criminal law experience, I am often asked to review worrying convictions.

POW, a prisoners' rights organisation, asked me on Tony's behalf to look at the case.

Despite major funding problems, I decided to take it on.'Thoughts on the case: 'For me, the decision provoked mixed reactions.

Obviously my client is pleased to no longer be a murderer, and there is now light at the end of the tunnel for him, but we're still not entirely happy with the result and are hoping to take it to the House of Lords.

From the start, I sensed Tony was right about the pivotal issue of the case - whether he was coming downstairs from his bedroom in panic, and was there confronted by the burglars in the dark - and so with scientific and medical experts we set about piecing together what exactly happened.

The scientific work was technically very challenging, and it became something of a scientific thriller as the results came in, allowing us to reconstruct events.

I have kept up my interest in science from schooldays, and this case shows its importance in criminal law.'Dealing with the media: 'Very unusually, the public and press were sympathetic to a man convicted of murder.

Max Clifford handled most of the media attention, for which I was most grateful, but they have besieged me anyway.

It is not easy to find the right balance between keeping the public informed of matters of interest, and not having trial by media.'Victoria MacCallum