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Nick Lockett is a barrister and solicitor-partner with ADL Solicitors of Cannon Street, London as well as an experienced arbitrator.
He specializes in both contentious and non-contentious Commercial law, Hi-Tech law and Intellectual Property law as well as financial services.
Nick Lockett originally qualified with a degree as a biologist in 1982 and became a successful merchant banker, working in the Guernsey Finance Industry where he developed Fund, Trust and Companies specialisations before also branching out into early hi-tech start-ups and biotech investments. He holds a number of merchant banking qualifications (Institute of Bankers) and also as an investment manager (London School of Investment) where he gained one of the highest marks ever given. He was promoted to be a compliance officer in the last 3 years of his career in Merchant Banking.
He left merchant banking to re-qualify as a lawyer (LLB (Hons), (London) after which he qualified at the English bar in 1992 as a barrister, (Call Inner Temple in 1993).
In 1995, despite his relative inexperience at the Bar was invited to be a member of Bar Council to advise Bar Council on the emerging internet, and how it was likely to change the law and the practice of law.
He also lectured extensively at the time on emerging issues in relation to the internet.
He was also the first barrister to persuade the High Court to allow service of proceedings solely over the internet, something that has now become commonplace.
In the late 1990s, he was headhunted by top US law-firm Sidley & Austin to head up the Internet, Commercial Litigation and Intellectual Property department which means that he also had to qualify as a solicitor.
Shortly before joining Sidley & Austin, he had written the first European book on Internet law and had advised on, and been counsel in a number of the early internet cases.
Shortly after joining Sidley, one of the cases was appealed and Nick was unusually permitted by the legal regulators to hold a bar practicing certificate concurrently with his solicitors practicing certificate in order to do the appeal.
To date, he remains only one of a handful of lawyers ever to be permitted to hold Bar & Solicitor practicing certificates.
In addition to his time as a barrister and with Sidley & Austin , he spent 2 years in Brussels with McDermott Will & Emery, Stanbrook where he expanded his knowledge of competition law under Clive Stanbrook QC and obtained a detailed knowledge of the workings of the European Commission and law-making at a community level.
With extensive expertise and professional experience accumulated over the years, Nick then set up his own firm ADL Solicitors and has provided clients, from multi-national corporations, to start-ups and billionaire founders with innovative and practical comprehensive solutions in many major and complex projects, including intellectual property cases before the European Court of Justice and has assisted IP cases in the USA as both assistive counsel and as an expert witness on European IP law. Having been a pioneer in the infancy of the Internet, helping the law develop coherently, he has recently turned his knowledge of hi-tech law and intellectual property to look at the legal and ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence and his new book “Techsistential Risk – AI law and Ethics” is expected to be due out in late 2023 or early 2024
