Spear’s Review

Mark Stephens CBE of Howard Kennedy is possibly the best-known reputation lawyer in the country; clients have included Harvey Weinstein’s ex-assistant Zelda Perkins and Julian Assange, as well as the governments of Jamaica, Libya and Mauritius.

Stephens is a rare talent: he is just as comfortable on the This Morning sofa as he is undertaking high-profile human rights and intellectual property disputes. Appointed CBE in 2011, Stephens’ broad practice also includes constitutional, media and regulatory work, as well as cases involving defamation claims, privacy, media, art and cultural property, data protection, trusts and international arbitration disputes.

He tells Spear’s that his clients are taking more proactive steps to protect their reputations. ‘We’re seeing it particularly with famous people who may be regarded as brands,’ he says. These measures include ‘delisting or delinking on the Google search engine’ and ‘playing the margins between the laws of different countries’.