HERE at Sintons, we are delighted to have the opportunity to be associated with the farming page in the Hexham Courant . Our logo adorns the page and once a month I will get the chance to inform you of some, hopefully topical, rural legal issue.

There are plenty of synergies between Sintons and the Hexham Courant . Both were founded in the 19th century (ok, so we are 32 years younger, not being founded until 1896) and have stayed firmly rooted to our location and our ethos of serving our client community over several generations.

We operate out of a single office in Newcastle, although steady growth over the last 100 or so years has meant that we now occupy a modern office on Barrack Road, opposite St James’ Park. We are close to the city centre, but easy to get to and there is plenty of car parking. The business retains a focus in the North-East, but our expertise is now used right across the UK.

Sintons is now a full service law firm, with 120 lawyers and over 200 staff. This makes us one of the largest law firms in the region. This enables us to provide experts in all sorts of areas that impact on rural business and family life.

However, we have never lost our commitment to private client work, and boast the largest private client team in the North-East. Our chairman, Alan Dawson, is a private client lawyer and has now worked for several generations of some Tynedale families.

Although originally a property lawyer, I have specialised in agricultural law and recently qualified as a Fellow of the Agricultural Law Association, one of only a handful in the North-East. Should you have any issues that you would like to discuss, please do give me a ring and I would be delighted to meet you on farm for an initial, free, discussion.

But as this is a legal column, I had better mention some law: Murphy’s Law is technically different to Sod’s Law. The former states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong eventually. The latter requires that it will always go wrong with the worst possible outcome. Often, both laws seem to apply to agriculture in equal measure.