Claire Gill

Few lawyers can claim to have taken on Google and emerged a winner. But this is what Claire Gill did in 2018, when she fought a ‘right to be forgotten’ case and won. The High Court ruled that search results relating to a conviction received by her client, a businessman, should be removed.‘The case addressed what the judge called “novel questions which have never yet been considered in this court”,’ Gill explained to Spear’s. Indeed, the Carter-Ruck partner is no stranger to headline-grabbing cases, having won a libel case for Boris Berezovsky.Gill acts for HNWs, politicians, governments and corporations, advising on sensitive defamation, privacy and data protection issues.

Defamation and privacy maestro Claire Gill spent a significant portion of the year acting for two businessmen in the first ‘right to be forgotten’ case against Google. ‘I was dealing with uncharted legal territory,’ recalls Gill. ‘I had a strong belief in the policy of the rehabilitation of offenders – which is undermined in an internet age – but there were complex legal issues in play.’ Gill is renowned for finding practical solutions to complex problems. Clients look to her for discretion and effectiveness. ‘We are quickly able to understand nuanced geopolitical situations and how they impact on our clients’ interests,’ says Gill.

Claire Gill is working on two big cases against Google which go to trial next year, acting for clients claiming for alleged data breaches and misuse of private information arising from search results. Both cases ‘involve an important point of principle about how the public can access information via Google search engines,’ says Gill, who has been at Carter-Ruck since 1994.

A seasoned solicitor of 22 years’ experience (all at Carter-Ruck), Gill says complexity lies not within the law itself: ‘The basic principles are the same, but the mode of publication has forced the law to adapt.’