The specialist nature of the English Bar brings with it a blessing and a curse: on the one hand it is conducive to breeding practitioners who are experts in their respective specialist fields; on the other hand it is all too easy to fall into the habit of thinking about the law as if it is compartmentalised into hermetically sealed silos.
One would therefore be forgiven for thinking that construction law and maritime/shipping law respectively fall within two such silos, the two being very distinct areas of practice even though they both fall under the broader umbrella of commercial law. It is right to say that a construction practitioner would very rarely partake in the work of a shipping lawyer, and vice versa. However, it does not follow that construction law and maritime law are two unrelated bodies of law which do not speak to each other (like the metaphorical “ships passing in the night”).
Published by Lloyd’s List Intelligence, you can read Mathias’s full article on the i-law website here.
