Obiter ventured north on the West Coast main line to celebrate the opening of high-profile firm Leigh Day’s human rights department in Manchester.

Disappointingly the champagne reception wasn’t in the firm’s own premises – we’ve always wanted to visit Monsall – but in a hired hall off Deansgate.

To be fair, the Bridgewater Hall is probably a bigger draw for the city’s legal community, which turned out in force to hear what headline-grabbing cases Leigh Day has in its sights.

As it happens, the speeches were commendably short. The stars of the show were clients’ videoed thank-you messages for the firm’s work in cases ranging from housing benefit to the Windrush scandal to the ‘bedroom tax’. Not to mention that of a visually impaired man who narrowly avoided being run over by a goods train.

Keeping firmly out of the limelight was senior partner Martyn Day, who told Obiter that he has been working mainly on international cases lately. After 42 years in the profession, has he any thoughts of taking it easy? ‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘I’m having much too much fun.’

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