Slaughter and May corporate veteran Nigel Boardman and Edwin Coe litigation head David Greene have joined a new legal think tank to research and debate key legal issues.

Boardman (pictured) and Greene join the 14-member board of Halsbury's Law Exchange, which is chaired by the former BBC legal editor Joshua Rozenberg. The think tank is billed as an attempt to generate debate on legal and public policy issues.

The other members of the board include legal consultants Tony Williams and Nick Jarrett-Kerr, as well as a group of senior barristers, including QCs Stephen Hockman, Timothy Pitt-Payne and Khawar Qureshi.

The 14-strong team has been delegated to a different area of law or practice on which their research is focused, including corporate, human rights, crime, environment and family law. The body is set to provide white papers and blogs on topics and invite debate from the public.

The move echoes the launch of the College of Law's Legal Services Policy Institute. Halsbury's, which launched this week, is being funded by legal publisher LexisNexis.

The group's website states: "Although law constitutes the fabric of our society in the UK and reflects our norms, the principles that underpin our laws are seldom open to reasoned and informed debate that will change or shape legislation. Halsbury's Law Exchange seeks to change this state of affairs."

Boardman, who made partner at Slaughters in 1982 and is widely regarded as one of the City's top lawyers, is also a non-executive director of Save the Children UK and chair of its Child Survival campaign board.

He commented: "When I was asked to be involved in Halsbury's Law Exchange it was an issue that was particularly on my mind as I was advising, pro bono, the South African Government on the reform of its company law. I think that a lawyer's role in society is crucial and having a forum for debate is important."

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