Nicholas Whitmey is a lawyer practising in London, England, who became a partner of the City of London firm Theodore Goddard. He was admitted to the bar in England in 1974 and holds a Bachelor of Laws degree with honours.
Background
Nicholas Whitmey's professional life was centred in London. The English legal profession he entered was divided between barristers, who were admitted to the bar, and solicitors, who practised in firms such as Theodore Goddard.
London was the seat of the Royal Courts of Justice and the Inns of Court, where barristers trained and were called to the bar. Solicitors' firms clustered near the courts, and Theodore Goddard's early offices were close to the Law Courts, which shaped the working environment of the legal profession in which Whitmey spent his career.
Education
Whitmey holds a Bachelor of Laws degree with honours. A Bachelor of Laws is an undergraduate law degree, and an honours classification indicates a higher grade of achievement than an ordinary pass.
His legal education led to the stage of formal admission to the English profession. In 1974 he was admitted to the bar in England, which marked his entry into the professional legal practice that followed.
Career
Whitmey worked as a partner of Theodore Goddard, a London solicitors' firm. The firm was founded in 1902 by John Theodore Goddard, who began practising on his own account from Clement's Inn, close to the Law Courts, as a litigator on the London court circuit. The practice moved to Sergeant's Inn in the Temple area in 1917 as it grew.
A direct hit during the Second World War in 1941 destroyed the firm's premises together with most of its records and clients' papers. The firm then relocated to New Court, immediately behind the Law Courts, and remained there until 1965, when it moved to St Martin's Le Grand in the City of London to concentrate on company and commercial work. That shift toward corporate practice shaped the firm's character in the decades that followed.
Whitmey was admitted to the bar in England in 1974. In England the term 'the bar' conventionally refers to the profession of barristers, distinct from the solicitors who organised most firms of Theodore Goddard's type. The firm later merged with Addleshaw Booth & Co on 1 May 2003 to form Addleshaw Goddard, a merger that brought together a London practice and a northern firm with roots dating back to 1775.
