LIFETIME achievement awards are not given out lightly. The recipients are often shining lights in their fields who have, as the name suggests, a lifetime of achievement behind them.

For Tony Fisher, senior partner at Colchester law firm Fisher Jones Greenwood, recognition at this year’s Modern Law Awards is a token of his tireless enthusiasm.

Tony, who grew up in South Wales, knew he wanted to practice law aged 13.

“I had a vague sense I wanted to help ensure fairness, especially for those who could not secure it for themselves,” he said.

“I grew up in a pub in the Gower Peninsula and I started my career in Wales. I was the first person in my family to go to university and studied law in Aberystwyth.”

He worked as a trainee solicitor in local government and then moved to Colchester shortly before qualifying in 1980, where he worked for sole practitioner Roy Bowler.

After three years Mr Fisher and work partner David Jones opened award-winning firm Fisher Jones. Initially it was just the two of them but following a number of mergers the company now has about 170 staff.

“David did conveyancing and wills and I did everything else. Crime, family, personal injury,” he said.

“The firm grew slowly until we merged with Greenwood Page and Ward in 1996. They were an old established firm in Colchester but we had youth and ideas on our side. The firm has continued to grow since then.”

He felt there was a lot to learn, but during the 1980s Mr Fisher focused on personal injury work and out of this rose an opportunity to follow his dream defending human rights.

He was approached by a woman who wanted to pursue a remedy against her adoptive family for alleged sexual assaults.

He said: “She had suffered emotional and psychological problems which she did not initially link to the abuse. This was the 1980s before the emotional consequences were well known.

“I obtained legal aid to pursue the claim but because of her age, attempts were made to get her case stopped. It went to the House of Lords and we ultimately lost on a technical limitation issue.”

However, it was not the end of Mr Fisher, as two decades later the decision was reversed. It was one of the rare cases where the highest court admitted it had been wrong.

Mr Fisher, 61, said: “The case made me feel a great injustice had been done. I had vaguely heard of the European Convention on Human Rights and I knew Essex University had a human rights centre.

“I eventually engaged the help of Professor Kevin Boyle there to take the case to Strasbourg, where we had a magnificent victory in the commission but lost in the court.

“The case was my first introduction to human rights work at a European level.”

At the time professors Kevin Boyle and Francoise Hampson from Essex University were working in Strasbourg on behalf of Kurdish citizens in Turkey, who were suffering human rights abuses at the hands of security forces.

“They asked me to help,” Mr Fisher said. “At first I thought it was going to be the occasional hour of drafting on a Sunday afternoon.

“I started attending fact finding hearings in Turkey in front of the European Commission, representing villagers who showed great bravery giving evidence in relation to village destructions, torture and other extreme violations.”

The cases went on for ten years and he became a visiting fellow at the human rights centre there.

Towards the end of the cases he realised he was not going to be able juggle it all. He stopped the European case work but joined the Human Rights Committee at the Law Society, the representative body for solicitors.

He became chairman of the Human Rights Committee in 2007, making interventions on behalf of lawyers being persecuted in other countries. Other challenges include a lack of opportunities for younger trainees.

“It’s a challenging profession, my experience has been different because I have done so many different things and I am very grateful for that,” he said.

“But younger people do not get the opportunity as there is great pressure to specialise early on.”

For Mr Fisher, one of the most depressing things was the removal of legal aid due to Government cuts.

He said: “It’s made a big difference to people who are struggling to find their way by themselves.

“There’s a rise in the number of people representing themselves and they really don’t know what they are doing.”

Despite this, he is proud of his firm and the people in it.

Mr Fisher and his wife, Liz, 49, are family orientated as they have seven children, aged between 17 and 30, between them. However, he said human rights has always been close to his heart.

About 12 years ago he became a trustee of the Graham Turnball Memorial Fund, which remembers the respected lawyer who was killed during the Rwanda genocide.

In 2002, he also helped set up Lawyers for Young People, supporting children in care.

He said: “My mission has always been to ensure we recognise we have a duty to uphold the rule of law and stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms.

“These rights and freedoms are precious, I have seen from the work I have done in other countries how quickly they can be lost.”