Who? Gareth Thomas, 59-year-old consultant at the Pontypool branch of Newport firm Watkins & Gunn, who specialises in personal injury and education cases.

Why is he in the news? Represented 23-year-old Sophie Amor, the woman who received a £20,000 settlement from her education authority after she started legal action claiming to have been bullied at primary school more than 12 years ago. Ms Amor attended St Peter's Church in Wales School in Blaenavon from the age of four to 11. She alleged she had suffered psychological damage following seven years of daily taunting, teasing and physical abuse, during which time the school had failed to take any action despite repeated complaints from her mother. She said she had once needed stitches around her eye after being pushed to the ground and had attempted suicide when she was nine. At 14, she was diagnosed with depression and taken out of mainstream education. Torfaen Council agreed a settlement three years after Ms Amor started the civil action, but stressed that it denied liability.


Route to the case: 'Ms Amor's family were existing clients of the firm.'


Background: Law degree followed by Law Society Finals, both at Nottingham Trent University. Articles at Thompsons in Cardiff, qualifying in 1972 and becoming a partner in the mid-1970s. He joined his current firm as a partner in the late 1970s and became a consultant eight years ago.


Thoughts on the case: 'This case was no different from any stress-at- work case, except that it happened at school and it happened a long time ago. The school had a duty of care to Ms Amor to stop the bullying and to act upon the complaints made. Legal aid funding was refused and the client was unable to fund the case, so we had to make the difficult decision of whether to take on a case of this magnitude on a conditional fee agreement. When Ms Amor was at school there was not the same awareness of bullying as there is now, and one would like to think that this sort of case would not happen again.'


Dealing with the media: 'Dealing with the media was fairly new to me and I had not had to do so before on such a great scale. The client wanted to get the media involved in the case to highlight the problem of bullying and to try to help others in her position. The media were very sympathetic and so didn't present any problems.'