Sam Cottman

Sam is a partner and Head of Pro Bono.

Prior to his appointment as the firm's first Director of Pro Bono in March 2020, he spent 12 years in the firm's Dispute Resolution team during which time he was promoted to Senior Counsel, ranked by Legal 500 as a 'Rising Star' and co-led the team which won Commercial Litigation Team of the Year at all three major legal awards.

Earlier in his career he was selected as a judicial assistant in the Court of Appeal (ultimately working for the Lord Chief Justice) and also seconded to the Serious Fraud Office in a high-profile role in one of the regulator’s blockbuster investigations.

Throughout his career Sam has played a significant role in the firm's pro bono practice, with a particular focus on acting for victims of domestic violence and international development work. He has taken a lead role in shaping the firm's pro bono work, including creating teams to act for victims of domestic abuse and human trafficking. He also runs the firm's partnerships with a number of pro bono brokerages and with human rights organisation JUSTICE (looking into the over representation of BAME youth in the criminal youth justice system).

Sam has re-configured the firm's pro bono strategy to focus on four key areas:

Climate, Environment and Sustainability
Diversity, Inclusion and Social Mobility
Vulnerable Groups (Domestic Violence, Refugees etc)
Rule of Law

In 2020 Sam won both the Wig & Pen Prize for outstanding contribution to pro bono and the LawWorks award for Best Contribution by an Individual to pro bono. In 2021, he was short-listed by the Law Society for Solicitor of the Year and by the IBA for their global pro bono award. Travers Smith also won best CSR Programme at the Legal Business Awards in 2021 and Best Company for Pro Bono at the Better Society Awards in 2022 for its domestic abuse work, which included the launch of the Domestic Abuse Response Alliance (DARA) which was founded by Sam.

Sam is also the founder of the Cottman Foundation, a charity which tackles domestic violence, knife crime and human trafficking and funds clean water projects, homes for abandoned children and youth sports programmes.

Driving professionalisation and significant growth of Travers Smith's pro bono practice
Visit the DARA website.
Launching team to act for victims of human trafficking
Leading corporate support to JUSTICE investigation into the over representation of BAME youth in the criminal youth justice system

Developing leading impact investing, green finance and ESG pro bono practice
Secondment to Serious Fraud Office leading £multi-billion fraud investigation and major suspect and witness interviews
Defending Kaupthing and Jóhannes Rúnar Jóhannsson in two Commercial Court cases in which the Tchenguiz brothers claimed damages of £3 billion for an alleged unlawful conspiracy to mislead the SFO

Sam worked directly for me on an array of high profile and challenging cases over many months. His work was of the highest quality. He was a great pleasure to work with, entirely reliable and enormously hard working.

Sam has shown great leadership of the case, total dedication to our client and to our wider aims as an organisation. Sam's commitment, tenacity and legal expertise mean he is the perfect partner for us as we seek to take on cutting edge cases and find new ways to bring justice to our clients. We could not be more grateful to him or hold him in any higher esteem than we do. Sam is an extraordinary example of a solicitor.

Sam is a major asset.

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