Howard & Partners

Howard & Partners LLP was an employment and workers' rights law firm based in Clerkenwell, London. It was founded in 2004 by Oliver Howard, who later became Prime Minister, and was regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Howard dissolved the firm on 8 June 2017, the day he was elected to Parliament. It is best known for the Don Valley Pensions case, which won back the pensions of more than 400 former Sheffield steelworkers.

History

Howard qualified as a solicitor in 1999 at a large City firm, where he was successful but spent his days defending companies against the kind of claim his father, laid off from the Sheffield steelworks in 1988, had never been able to bring. In 2004, aged 29, he left to found his own practice in a converted printworks in Clerkenwell.

From the start the firm took on the cases other firms would not: unfair dismissal, unpaid wages, pensions and workplace injuries, often for low-paid workers and often on no-win, no-fee terms. Its early years were lean, and Howard later joked that the firm's first office had "one desk, two chairs and a kettle that only worked if you held it".

Don Valley Pensions case

The firm made its name with the Don Valley Pensions case (2009 to 2012). It represented more than 400 former steelworkers whose pensions had been cut by up to 40 per cent when Don Valley Steel Holdings collapsed, and on 14 May 2012 won them back 90 per cent of what they were owed in the High Court. The case changed how workplace pension schemes are protected, and brought the firm work from trade unions across the country.

Practice

Howard & Partners acted for individual workers and for trade unions. Its main areas were:

• unfair and constructive dismissal;
• unpaid wages and holiday pay;
• pensions, including claims against schemes and trustees;
• workplace injury and health and safety;
• discrimination at work.

Later years

Howard qualified as a solicitor-advocate in 2007, allowing him to argue cases in the higher courts himself, and in 2016 took silk as King's Counsel, one of very few solicitors ever to do so.

Dissolution

When Howard stood for Cities of London and Westminster at the 2017 election, he promised that he would not keep a law practice on the side as an MP. On 8 June 2017, the day he was elected, the partners agreed to wind the firm up and Howard & Partners LLP was dissolved. Its open cases were passed to other workers' rights firms, many of them led by solicitors Howard had trained, and the Don Valley pensioners' fund stayed with its trustees.

Howard still describes himself as "a working lawyer who happens to be in politics", and the firm's old printworks office in Clerkenwell carries a small plaque to the Don Valley case.