On the ball

Solicitor Neil Hudgell maintains that it was ‘common sense’ that fuelled his journey from a childhood living on a working class housing estate in Hull to founding a ‘specialist litigation firm’ that has acted in some of the country’s highest profile cases of recent times. He has also been recognised as Gazette Legal Personality of the Year 2021, saw his firm listed in The Times 200 Best Law Firms 2021, founded his own charitable trust fund, and is the owner of a professional rugby league team, Hull Kingston Rovers.

There were hiccups on the way. Hudgell failed his A levels at the first sitting, but rallied by enrolling in night school. There he sat A level law, which he passed and ‘enjoyed’. Upon moving on to North Staffordshire Polytechnic (which is now Staffordshire University), he still had no ambition to become a lawyer, and opted to study criminology. It was only when he became one of the first batch of trainees to be employed by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) that the siren call of a career in law became irresistible.

Upon qualification, he moved into private practice, joining long-established Hull firm Max Gold. Hudgell takes up the story.

‘Overnight, I went from newly qualified to running one of Max Gold’s offices. It was on a council estate in north Hull and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Anyone could walk in with literally any legal problem: divorce, injunction, personal injury claim, even someone who had committed murder. It was all a fantastic grounding in how to look after clients, to let them know that their solicitor has their back.’

In 1997, Hudgell acquired three of Max Gold’s branch offices. Hudgell Solicitors was in business. ‘I dabbled in anything and everything. A lot of the time I was dealing with domestic strife – injunctions by the bucketful.’ From then on, he says, it was a ‘matter of incremental steps’.

‘Historically, lawyers are poor at marketing themselves, but we produced some catchy radio commercials that doubled the size of our business. We were still very much a small local practice until online arrived, which made a massive difference,’ Hudgell recalls. ‘We began to have clients from all over the country, whereas previously we had actually lost clients through geography – after all, lots of people don’t know where Hull is. And so we opened offices in Leeds and later in Manchester. Everyone knows where Leeds and Manchester are.’

'Overnight, I went from newly qualified to running one of Max Gold’s offices. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Anyone could walk in with literally any legal problem: divorce, injunction, personal injury claim, even someone who had committed murder'

All this was happening against the backdrop of reduced legal aid for personal injury and other civil cases, opening the door for Hudgell Solicitors to ‘bulk up’ with the casebooks of struggling firms and even acquiring some of them. One such firm was the clinical negligence practice Harris Cartier – a 26-lawyer firm with offices in London and Slough – which Hudgell Solicitors acquired in 2013. Harris Cartier had been placed into administration after failing to secure professional indemnity insurance in time for the 1 October deadline.

‘Along with our offices in Hull, Manchester and Leeds, our foothold in London gave us the opportunity to become a truly national firm, with offices able to look after clients across England and Wales,’ Hudgell says.

He observes: ‘Clients can easily find someone else who knows the law. That’s the easy part. What they really need is someone to care about their case and situation, and to give them the best possible service. That fits our values of righting wrongs every day, and seeing the person, not just the claim.

'The key to success is getting your name out there and demystifying the process. If you do a good job and put your client’s mind at rest then the client becomes an advocate for your business. There’s nothing better than a testimonial from a satisfied client'

‘We have honoured these values as the firm expanded from clinical negligence and personal injury into civil liberties, travel, employment law, and child and domestic abuse. We’ve recruited the legal talent necessary to meet the challenges of a rapidly broadening portfolio. And we’ve strengthened our market position with a high number of strategic acquisitions.’

This all sounds impressive, but how did Hudgell achieve so much with just a background in small local practices? ‘I’ve always been a sole owner, but then all I’ve done is common sense. The key to success is getting your name out there and demystifying the process. If you do a good job and put your client’s mind at rest then the client becomes an advocate for your business. There’s nothing better than a testimonial from a satisfied client.’

Hudgell says that over the last few years, Hudgell Solicitors has ‘morphed’ into a major player in nationally significant legal cases, such as the scandal of wrongfully convicted sub-postmasters and securing a Royal pardon for a murderer.

Professional rugby league team Hull Kingston Rovers has been a life-long passion for Neil Hudgell. It began with his grandparents taking him to matches when he was seven years old. He graduated from the terraces to become one of the team’s ball-boys. Having qualified as a solicitor, he went on to become the team’s legal adviser. And for the last 21 years, he’s been the club’s chairman.

Horizon scandal

‘The Post Office Horizon scandal is widely recognised as the biggest miscarriage of justice that the UK has ever seen,’ says Hudgell.

Horizon was the computerised accounting system used in branch post offices between 2000 and 2012. It was intended to record all transactions at a branch and then calculate how much cash and stock should remain. Unfortunately, the system was flawed, and in 2019 the High Court found it had ‘numerous bugs, errors or defects’ that reported illusory shortfalls in cash and stock. In April 2021, the Court of Appeal quashed the convictions of 39 sub-postmasters who the Post Office had accused of fraud and other offences, based on data from Horizon: 33 were represented by Hudgell Solicitors.

‘As many as 900 sub-postmasters were wrongfully prosecuted for stealing money when accounts showed unexplained shortfalls running into thousands of pounds,’ Hudgell explains. ‘Many were convicted between 2003 and 2013 of theft, fraud and false accounting. Some went to prison, others were fined, all saw their good names undermined by being forced into admitting to crimes they had not committed. They did so simply because they were told the Horizon computer system was infallible. They were told they would inevitably face jail if they continued to maintain their innocence as they were sure to be found guilty in court. They would be treated more leniently, they were assured, if they confessed and made up a story as to where the money went.’

The 33 sub-postmasters that Hudgell Solicitors represented were in the first batch of cases referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. After the trial, Hudgell said: ‘The door to justice has been opened.’

Quality of mercy

On 29 November 2019, convicted murderer Steven Gallant was out on licence, attending an event about prisoner rehabilitation at London’s Fishmongers’ Hall at London Bridge. This was the day Usman Khan attacked.

Exercising considerable courage, Gallant and two other attendees – Darryn Frost, a communications manager for the Prison and Probation Service, and John Crilly, a former prisoner – restrained Khan using a fire extinguisher and a narwhal tusk, until police officers arrived and shot and killed the terrorist.

Khan had killed two people and injured two more, before Gallant, Frost and Crilly intervened. Gallant’s friend Jack Merritt was one of the dead.

Hudgell (and others) made representations to HM Prison and Probation Service, requesting a Royal pardon for Gallant.

The request was endorsed by the governor of Gallant’s prison, culminating in a Royal Prerogative of Mercy order being approved by the lord chancellor on behalf of the Queen. At the time, the Ministry of Justice said the pardon was granted ‘in recognition of (Gallant’s) exceptionally brave actions’.

This was the first time a Royal pardon had been granted since 2013, when Alan Turing was granted a posthumous pardon for a 1952 conviction for gross indecency.

The mathematician, whose contribution towards breaking the Nazi Enigma code helped the Allied Forces secure victory in World War II, died by suicide in 1954.

Unlike Turing’s full pardon, the Royal Prerogative of Mercy granted to Gallant only brought his parole hearing forward by 10 months. On 21 June 2021, the Parole Board found that Gallant did not present a risk to the public, so he would be freed on licence.

For Hudgell, Gallant’s pardon was another triumph of justice in a long and illustrious career of ‘achieving settlements that enable people to get their lives back on track and look to the future’.