Lord Justice Lawrence Collins has been named the first solicitor to become an appeal court judge.

Collins, who was a litigation partner at Herbert Smith between 19712000, was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal following recommendation from the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, it was announced yesterday (11 January)

In 1997, Collins was one of the first solicitors – along with Arthur Marriott at Wilmer Cutler & Pickering (now Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr) – to benefit from new arrangements entitling solicitors to apply to become Queen's Counsel. In the same year, Collins became the first solicitor to be directly appointed to the High Court bench, where he remained until 2000.

In his time at Herbert Smith, Collins acted on a number of high-profile cases including acting for the Government of Chile in January 2000 in its bid to extradite former president General Augusto Pinochet.