In the first of our Meet the Lawyer profiles, Legal Life is pleased to profile Employment Judge Colin Sara, whose book on Boundaries and Easements has just reached a 5th Edition.

“I was called to the bar in 1966 and joined Albion Chambers.  After a few years I concentrated on civil work and built up a specialist practice doing “boundary disputes”

In 1987 I was appointed as an employment judge (then Chairman of Industrial Tribunals) based in Bristol. Life was not quite so hectic then in the tribunal and I took the opportunity to write “Boundaries & Easements”.  I felt that although the two subjects worked on different principles, the reality was that they were often encountered together and there was a need for a practitioners’ book which covered both. I tried to concentrate on the current law and to cite the latest relevant authority, rather than to look at the history of how the law had developed.

Fortunately my publishers, Sweet & Maxwell, took the same view and so did the legal profession. Since 1991 when it was first published, the book has gone through five editions, the latest having just been published (11 November 2011 ISBN 978-0-414-04806-5 Sweet & Maxwell  £185).

The book is widely used by practitioners and, indeed, has been cited on more than one occasion by the Court of Appeal, not least in the controversial case of Wall v Collins [2007] Ch 390, about the esoteric subject of merger of estates. The questioning by the Court of Appeal of the statement of the law set out in “Boundaries & Easements” has led the Law Commission to suggest that the law be reinstated to what it was believed to be before that decision (Making Land Law Work: Easements Covenants & Profits à Prendre Law Com No 307).

Apart from keeping up with Boundaries & Easements, I was a full-time employment judge until 2009 and am now part time. In 1995 I co-founded the European Association of Labour Court Judges, which arranges annual congresses of European judges in cities throughout the EU and on subjects ranging from fundamental rights, to access to justice for migrant workers.  I am the Secretary-General of that Association and author of a number of reports.

In my spare time I am a keen bowler, playing for Redland Green Bowling Club in the North-East Bristol League and also playing croquet at Bristol Croquet Club.

I am married with two children and four grand-children. One of my daughters is a local academic architect at UWE and the other is a lecturer in dance at the internationally renowned Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London.”