Lawyers come in all shapes and sizes. They may be generalists or specialists, Gucci-shod legal eagles serving big companies or rumpled advocates for the under-privileged. More than half the members of the US Senate have law degrees. There are more jokes about lawyers than almost any other segment of humanity.

David Shapiro, who has died in London aged 81, covered most of the legal bases in his long career, from its beginnings as a defender of those targeted by McCarthy era purges to its middle passage as a pioneering class-action lawyer and its conclusion as an apostle of the concept of mediation in the English legal system.