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 Sue Willman Background Sue Willman is a partner who qualified in 1996. Sue was recruited by Pierce Glynn in 2003, after 14 years high profile litigation experience at Hammersmith & Fulham Community Law Centre. Public law, discrimination and human rights Sue has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright scholarship to study international human rights law (LLM) at Georgetown University in Washington DC. She will be on sabbatical leave from August 2010, returning to Pierce Glynn in July 2011. During her absence, Gareth Mitchell is interim head of Public Law and Human Rights at Pierce Glynn, Neena Acharya will have conduct of her detention judicial reviews and other challenges to UKBA decisions. Sasha Rozansky will be the first point of contact for migrant support. Sue is ranked as a "leading individual" in the Chambers 2009 directory in the Public and Administrative Law and Civil Liberties and Human Rights categories. She has a broad spectrum of public and human rights law expertise, covering discrimination and equality cases, EU law, Humans Rights Act claims, public sector service cuts, healthcare, planning and environmental, migrant support and immigration detention. Sue’s past and current public law work includes challenges to reductions in public services in a broad range of areas: from care home closures to a Law Centre funding cut. She works with patients to ensure access to NHS treatment, such as mentally ill or transgendered clients. She has experience of challenging major planning decisions which exclude affordable housing or have a potential adverse environmental effect, or where race and disability equality duties have not been complied with. Recently she has secured the release of a number of foreign national prisoners unlawfully detained due to their psychiatric conditions, non-removability to countries like Somalia and Palestine, or length of detention. Across a variety of public law cases, she has challenged delays in decision-making by public bodies, particularly the Home Office, and represented clients seeking access to information, particularly medical or environmental information. Sue is also renowned for her expertise in securing adequate welfare provision for migrants, including EU nationals. In 2007 she won 'Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year' in the immigration category for this work. She is the lead author of the standard legal text on the subject, the most recent expanded edition is Support for Asylum Seekers and other Migrants, 2009 (LAG). She has written widely about issues affecting people from abroad in the legal press and contributes a regular updating column on this area of the law to Legal Action magazine. She also writes regularly about social justice and human rights issues. She has provided training for national organisations and spoken on a variety of platforms about this difficult and controversial area of the law. She is Chair of the Asylum Support Appeals Project and Secretary of the Roma Support Group Management Committee. In 2006 she was appointed as a specialist adviser to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights for their Inquiry into the treatment of asylum-seekers. In 2009 Pierce Glynn began work with London Detainee Support Group on a litigation project aimed at reducing arbitrary detention. In 2008 Sue took part in a Law Society delegation to investigate human rights violations in Colombia. Social welfare law Whilst Sue now concentrates on her public law and human rights work, she has extensive experience in social welfare lawyer and continues to act in a small number of more complex social welfare law cases, particularly those with overlap with her public law and human rights expertise or work with groups. For example, Sue is currently representing a group of squatters facing eviction in an application to the European Court of Human Rights, relying on Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention. She has successfully used Disability Equality duty arguments to resolve a number of housing and community care cases involving disabled clients. Reported cases Sue’s reported cases include:
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