John Goodwin

Practice Areas

My main sector expertise is in criminal work - defence and prosecution.

Career

I qualified as a solicitor in October 1982. I moved to Howard Cohen & Co Solicitors at the beginning of January 1983 and stayed there until July 2025. The firm changed its name to Cohen Cramer Limited. In July 2024, the firm was acquired by Ison Harrison Limited, where I have worked ever since. I was originally a General Practitioner. That was quite common in those days and I dealt with all sorts of areas of law including, but not limited to, criminal defence, civil litigation, personal injury law, divorce, care, company law, wills and probate, residential and commercial conveyancing, immigration, benefits law, education law, all sorts of commercial law, partnerships, tax disputes and indeed anything, in those days, which came into the office. In 1999, after the Woolf reforms, I concentrated much more on criminal defence work.

Recently, I have undertaken prosecution work as well and I am prosecuting a considerable number of cases for West Yorkshire Trading Standards. I am a solicitor advocate appointed as such in the first tranche of appointments around 25 years ago. I have appeared as an advocate in the Crown Court and the Court of Appeal. I have defended a huge number of homicide cases and very high value fraud matters, as well as all types of criminal cases. I dealt with the first ever case in connection with a “jury nobbling”, pervert the course of justice trial, where the police were given permission to take statements from jury members by the Courts of Appeal.

I defended the first ever person prosecuted for offenses relating to crack cocaine.

Professional Memberships

N/A

Publications

I am currently writing a book on a legal topic, having been approached by a well known publisher. This is due for final submission by June next year. I am prohibited from giving any further details.

Personal

I am married with three children and six grandchildren. I am keen pianist. I have completed marathons and half marathons and other distance runs.

Clients

I always keep the details of my clients confidential. I have, however, represented solicitors, Counsel, political figures, well known sports personalities and clients from all types of backgrounds. I am able to say that I prosecute for West Yorkshire Trading Standards.

Work Highlights

Whilst I keep client details confidential, probably the highlight of my career was working along with my late business partner Howard Cohen in defending Imran Khan, the former test cricketer and Prime Minister of Pakistan, in a very highly publicised libel action brought against him by the famous cricketers Ian Botham and Alan Lamb.

Further to what I have said above, there have been too many cases over the years for me to comment on any “highlights”. The highlight of my career in defence is really the fact that in so many cases, I am privileged to have contributed towards results at Court for which my clients are eternally grateful. One particular highlight was not a particularly memorable case. I represented a family who had been falsely arrested by the police. The initial police defence was shown to be false in many respects and the police accepted that they had gone to the wrong house to effect arrest. What was so wonderful about the case was that my clients, who were devoutly religious, accepted the first offer that the police made. They were not interested in money. They just wanted an acknowledgement and they asked me to nominate a charity for the payment of money.

A continual work highlight is the opportunity to meet talented professionals. I have had the privilege of working with some extraordinary Counsel over the years and, in many cases, to see their development from Junior Counsel to Queen’s and nowadays King’s Counsel.

Similarly, I would regard my greatest professional achievements as having been able to assist young lawyers who have come to our firm in developing their careers. When I have had trainee solicitors who have gone on to qualify and carve out successful careers this has been an immense source of satisfaction to me and continues to be so.

Industry Sector Expertise

My main sector expertise is in criminal work - defence and prosecution.

Expert in these Jurisdictions

England and Wales.

Education

Awards