New Year honours: profession recognised for achievements

Solicitors make a prominent showing in the 2019 New Year honours List. Mark Bridges, a partner at London firm Farrer & Co, private solicitor to the Queen since 2002, receives the Royal Victorian Order, a dynastic order of knighthood recognising distinguished personal service to the monarch.

Gillian Aitken, director general and general counsel at HM Revenue & Customs, becomes a Companion of the The Most Honourable Order of the Bath for services to taxpayers and social mobility. 

A former Law Society Gazette Legal Personality of the Year, Major General Susan Ridge, also receives the Order of the Bath (CB). General Ridge is director general of the Army Legal Services Branch. 

Crown Prosecution Service director of legal services Susan Hemming OBE, head of special crime and counter-terrorism division between 2011-2018, is awarded a CBE for services to law and order, particularly in counter-terrorism. 

Robert Heslett, a former DAC Beachcroft partner and Society president from 2009-2010, receives the CBE for services to access to justice and litigants in person. He is a former chair of the Personal Support Unit, a charity that helps unrepresented parties cope with court proceedings. 

OBEs are awarded to: 

Bradford solicitor Ruby Bhatti, of Taylor Price Solicitors, for services to young people and housing. A nominee for governor of the year at the 2018 Bradford Schools Awards, Bhatti is a board member of the Bradford Diocesan Academies Trust and Dixons Academies Trust;

Crown Prosecution Service prosecutor Eran Cutliffe, who works in the special crime division, for services to law and order;

Patrick Mears, external consultant at HMRC, for services to preventing abusive tax avoidance. Mears is a former global head of tax at magic circle firm Allen & Overy; 

Government Legal Department senior lawyer Ming Wai Kong, for services to energy policy; and

Diane Spence, senior Crown prosecutor, north-east complex casework, for services to law and order. 

MBEs are awarded to:

Medical negligence specialist Mehmooda Duke, who set up Leicester firm Moosa-Duke Solicitors in 2003, for services to the legal profession and female entrepreneurship. Duke, a member of the Law Society’s clinical negligence panel, began her career as a teacher but retrained as a lawyer a year later. In 2015 she became the first Asian female president of Leicestershire Law Society;

Anne-Louise Ferguson, director, shared services partnership legal and risk services, NHS Wales, for services to NHS Wales. Ferguson is a past-president of the Cardiff and District Law Society;

Gopal Krishan Gupta, founder of Gupta and Partners, for services to British business and philanthropy;

South-east employment judge Roger Harper for charitable and voluntary service; 

Christopher Lawrenson, head of legal services at the Building Society Association, for services to sustainability and accountability in the mutuals and building society sectors; and Xiaojiu Zhu (June Cruickshank), founder and chair of the UK Society of Chinese Lawyers, for services to law and the Chinese community.

Senior civil servants at the forefront of justice reforms are recognised. Richard Heaton, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice, becomes a Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath. Kevin Rousell, head of claims management regulation, Ministry of Justice, receives the OBE for services to claims management regulation.