Lawyer in the news

Who? James Lightfoot, 33-year-old associate specialising in civil litigation at three-partner London firm Healys.

Why is he in the news? Represents the family of Asgar Sabir Raja, the man who was killed by two hitmen hired by disgraced property tycoon Nicholas van Hoogstraten.

Mr Raja was a former business associate of van Hoogstraten, who is now serving a ten-year sentence for manslaughter.

At the time of his death, Mr Raja was suing van Hoogstraten in a 5 million property fraud claim, and before Christmas, the High Court struck out van Hoogstraten's defence against the claim after he failed to comply with court orders to disclose his assets.

The court imposed a sequestration order on van Hoogstraten's assets, and the Raja family now stands to collect 5 million.

Background: LLB at West London Polytechnic (now Thames Valley University) 1989-92, followed by Law Society finals at the College of Law in London.

He qualified in 1995 with Tunbridge Wells firm Buss Murton, moving in 1996 to Kingsford Stacey Blackwell and ending up at Healys in 1998.

Route to the case: 'We had acted for Mr Raja in a number of matters prior to his death, and his daughter is a trainee with the firm.'

Thoughts on the case: 'The result is a fantastic one for the family - it has been very hard fighting this case when the one person who could give conclusive evidence has been killed.

It was made even more difficult when the defendant was the main suspect in the related criminal case.

Because of the sequestration order, we are hopeful of recovering the damages from the estate relatively quickly.

The family has also issued personal injury proceedings on behalf of the family members who saw Mr Raja killed in front of them.'

Dealing with the media: 'I've had no past experience with such a high-profile case as this, and it has been a steep learning curve, particularly when this civil case was so closely interwoven with the criminal proceedings.

Certain sections of the media were extraordinarily helpful with providing background material - for example, it was very difficult unravelling the web of van Hoogstraten's business empire and the aliases he used, but the media drew our attention to old interviews where he made certain admissions.'

Victoria MacCallum