Experience Overview

Rosemary Rollason is a Senior Principal Lawyer, within our Professional Discipline & Regulation department.

She has specialised in regulatory and professional disciplinary law since the early 1990's, joining Russell Jones & Walker in 2009. During her career, she has represented a wide range of organisations with regulatory responsibilities, including most of the major healthcare professions, the education and social care regulators and those of the legal and financial professions.

Rosemary advises statutory and non-statutory regulatory organisations on governance and structural issues, on human rights, natural justice and the conduct of fair processes. She advises on the preparation and drafting of regulatory procedural rules, or on reviews of their fitness for purpose.

She has assisted new regulatory organisations in their set-up phase and in establishing the procedures which support their regulatory functions.
When acting for regulatory organisations, Rosemary is experienced in all aspects of fitness to practise issues, including conduct, performance and health. She advises on issues arising at the stages of registration and preliminary filtering of complaints, on interim orders, on interlocutory and substantive hearings before regulatory tribunals and on handling challenges to regulatory decisions in the courts by way of statutory appeal or judicial review.

Rosemary is currently appointed as a legal assessor to two healthcare regulatory bodies.

She has experience of leading teams handling substantial caseloads of complaints, advising on matters from the preliminary investigation stage through to final conclusion.

Rosemary is an experienced tribunal advocate and over her career, has appeared before the disciplinary panels of many regulators, both defending and prosecuting. She has acted as a legal advisor/assessor to preliminary and conduct/competence hearing panels.

She also advises individual professionals who come into contact with their regulatory body, including accountants, solicitors and healthcare professionals.
Rosemary focuses increasingly on legal training in regulatory law and for the last 5 years, has been a regular speaker at external conferences, as well as client conferences. In her role as a founding committee member of ARDL, the Association for Regulatory & Disciplinary Lawyers, she has been responsible for the organisation of ARDL's educational seminars. Rosemary also designs and presents tailored training programmes for regulatory clients.

In the leading legal directory Chambers & Partners 2012, Rosemary is described as a 'safe pair of hands' and is acknowledged as an 'expert in the representation of disciplinary regulators.' Rosemary is described as 'first rate' in the 2011 The Legal 500 Directory.

Rosemary is the Secretary of ARDL, the Association of Regulatory & Disciplinary Lawyers.