The Inforrm blog has a post up today looking at the work of Alastair Brett, the Times’ legal manager who has left the newspaper after 30 years.
It highlights the many campaigns Brett was behind to improve media law, such as disclosing offered payment of damages to a jury as well as establishing the “Fleet Street Lawyers’ Society”, which campaigned for press freedom before the Media Lawyers Association and various campaigns for libel law reform.
Alastair Brett has been central to many campaigns for the reform of libel law and procedure over more than two decades, writing in the Times, lobbying Government and Parliament and speaking frequently at legal conferences.
The article looks back along Brett’s career since joining the broadsheet in the late 1970s, from the major cases he fought to the causes he supported.