David Hall Partner

David is the Head of the firm’s Disputes, Planning & Construction Department. Over a 30 year career he has helped an extensive range of clients in both the private and public sectors to deal with the disputes and strategic challenges faced by their operations. Acting both throughout the UK and internationally he has a considerable breadth of experience in the litigation, arbitration and investigations which can typically be faced by a commercial organisation or public body.

Playing a leading role in our Dispute Resolution team, David uses his experience to work with his colleagues to help clients arrive at the right solution to their issue, minimising impact and maximising success. He is supported by our extensive dispute resolution practice which has a proven track record of success in the highest-profile and value cases and cross-border, multi-sector expertise.

David is the firm's lead partner on financial and corporate fraud and has extensive experience of handling multi-faceted bribery and corruption, money laundering and fraud cases facing institutional clients. As such he leads the firms Business Crime & Regulatory Investigations practice which won the Legal 500 Crime & Fraud Team of the Year (National) in 2020. David has considerable trial experience, both in High Court litigation and arbitration, and is experienced in mediation and other ADR techniques.

Named as a Leading Individual in Litigation in the Legal 500 for many years, clients have commented in this year’s Legal 500 that David 'excels in commercial litigation. He stays close to the matter, leads the team with second-to-none skills, and exceeds clients’ expectations.'

• Defending a major European Group against two significant Arbitration claims (£220 million and Euro 450 million respectively) arising from their international contracting frameworks. Both matters were successfully defended at trial.
• Acting for the National Crime Agency in defence of a £250 million compensation claim, being the first major section 283 POCA claim to be brought before the Courts.
• Acting for a leading UK financial institution on all aspects of its response to an organised, multiple party property finance fraud worth £55 million. Helped recover a significant proportion of the funds that were the subject of the fraud.
• Leading the response of a number of major corporate clients to allegations of fraudulent and criminal behaviour, including conducting internal investigations, leading responses to investigating authorities and regulators, liaising with whistle blowers, defending ancillary civil litigation and helping remedial action to help protect the client’s business reputation
• Successfully defending an international funds client in an LCIA arbitration against a claim for circa £80m involving allegations of fraudulent misrepresentation.
• Successfully defending an international trading client against a claim for repudiatory breach of a series of coal trading contracts under which the rail and sea transport was disrupted by Covid-19 and adverse weather conditions.