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Panel Speakers

Chair - Nick Hanning, ILEX Council Member and Advocate

Nick has been a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives since 1990. In 2000 he was one of the small group to qualify as the first ever Legal Executive Advocates and in 2009 was among the first Legal Executives to become a partner in a Solicitors' Practice.

He has been a Council Member since 2005 and Chair of the ILEX Pro Bono Forum since June 2007 besides being closely involved in Finance, Practice Rights and Legal Services Reform among other things.

Closer to his home in Poole, Nick is Secretary of the Bournemouth & District Branch of ILEX  and Chair of the Trustees of Bournemouth & Poole Pro Bono, a charity providing pro bono legal advice and training to local voluntary and community groups.

In his day job, Nick is a partner and personal injury and employment lawyer with RWPS LLP in Poole where he specialises in occupational stress claims, especially for the targets of bullying and harassment. Having secured the then largest ever award for a first breakdown case in 2001 he also acted for the Claimant in the seminal House of Lords case of Majrowski -v- Guy's and St Thomas's NHS Trust which established the principle of vicarious liability of employers under the Protection from Harassment Act.

Dr Dianne Hayter - Chair of the Legal Services Board

Currently Chair of the Legal Services Board, Dianne was formerly Chair of the Consumer Panel of the Bar Council. Dianne is also a member of the Board for Actuarial Standards, the Insolvency Practices Council, and the Determinations Panel of the Pension Regulator. She was previously Vice Chair of the Financial Services Consumer Panel, and on the National Consumer Council.

Prior to that she was the Chief Executive of a number of organisations, including Alcohol Concern, the European Parliamentary Labour Party and the Pelican Cancer Centre, as well as Director of Corporate Affairs at the Wellcome Trust. She served for a year as Chair of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee, is a trustee of a number of charities and was a JP for over a decade.

Chris Kenny - Chief Executive of the Legal Services Board

Chris Kenny is the inaugural Chief Executive of the Legal Services Board. His early career was in the Department of Health and the Treasury, where he held a variety of policy and management posts including Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State. As Oftel's Director of Regulatory Policy and then Director of Compliance between 2000 and 2003, he worked on access and competition issues and worked with industry and consumer bodies to establish the Telecoms Ombudsman.

 Most recently, as Director of Life and Pensions for the Association of British Insurers, he led the industry's input into the work of the Pensions Commission and the Government's response to it and worked with Lord Hunt of Wirral on the independent review of the Financial Ombudsman Service. Chris has also held non-executive posts in the NHS and third sector.

Alan Kershaw - Chair of ILEX Professional Standards

Alan was appointed in June 2008 as the first chair of  IPS.  Alan is a specialist in professional regulation and brings with him a long record of achievement.  He was the first chief executive of the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners from 1999 to 2007.  Prior to that, he had spent 16 years working for the General Medical Council, his final three years as director of education and standards.  He also holds board appointments on a number of other professional standards setting bodies.