Professor John Birds

John Birds began his academic career at Queen Mary College London, then taught at the University of Sheffield for 28 years before moving to Manchester in 2006. He was Professor of Commercial Law at Sheffield from 1989 to 2006 and was also Head of the Department of Law from 1987 to 1999 and from 2002 to 2005. He is currently Chair of the Board of Studies for Law programmes in the School of Law.

He is a leading authority on company law and insurance law, having published many books, articles and book chapters in both areas and holding editorial positions in leading company and commercial law journals, including The Company Lawyer, The Journal of Business Law, Insurance Research and Practice and European Company Law.

He has lectured widely, both in the UK and abroad, including in recent years at the University of Sydney, the National University of Singapore, the University of Nancy and the Korea Stock Exchange.

He has acted as consultant to government and private bodies. In 1991, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He was a member of the Training Committee of the Law Society, a member of the Law Panel for the Research Assessment Exercise 2001 and a member of the Law Sub-Panel for the Research Assessment Exercise 2008. In 2003-04 he was President of the Society of Legal Scholars.

Currently he is a member of the Project Group and Drafting Committee for the Restatement of European Insurance Contract Law and of the Advisory Panel for the Law Commission project on Insurance Contract Law.

Working (with colleagues from various European countries) on the Principles of European Insurance Contract law, to be published in 2009 by Sellier.

Insurance law, company law

A selection of publications:-

Principal books and reports

• Gore-Browne on Companies (Jordans, 45th edition, looseleaf), chapters 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 16, 17, 21, 24, 25, 26, 33  
• Boyle & Birds’ Company Law (Jordans, 7th edition, 2009) (with AJ Boyle, B Clark, I MccNeil, G MaCormack, C Twigg-Flesner, C Villiers)
• MacGillivray on Insurance Law (Sweet & Maxwell, 11th edition, 2008) (with N Legh-Jones & D Evans)
• Birds’ Modern Insurance Law (Sweet & Maxwell, 7th edition, 2007)
• Encyclopedia of Insurance Law (Sweet & Maxwell, looseleaf), General Editor
• Insurance Law – United Kingdom in the International Encyclopedia of Laws (Kluwer Law International, 1998, updated 2007)
• Insurance Law Reform: the consumer case for a review of insurance law, National Consumer Council, 1997
• Companies Act 2006: the New Law (Jordans, 2007) (with A Alcock and S Gale), revised and published as Alcock, Birds and Gale on the Companies Act 2006 (2009)
• Annotated Companies Acts (Oxford University Press, 2007) General Editor

Chapters in books

• Contributions to Casebook Europäisches Gesellschafts-und Unternehmensrecht, ed Saeinger, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2002, at pp74-5, 98-100, 112-114, 166-167, 212-221, 236-237
• "The Reform of Directors’ Duties," chapter 8 in The Reform of UK Company Law, ed De Lacy, Cavendish, 2002
• Chapter 10, “Insurance” in The Law of Product Liability, ed Howells (Butterworths, 2000), 2nd edition, 2007
• Chapter 4, “Some thoughts on directors’ conflicts of interest” in Developments in European Company Law, Volume 3/1999: Directors’ Conflicts of Interest: Legal, Socio-Legal and Economic Analysis, eds Andenas and Sugarman (Kluwer Law International)
• Chapter 16, “Company Law” in Law’s Future(s), ed Hayton (Hart Publishing. 2000) (with J Parkinson)
• Chapter 4, “Insurable Interests”, in Interests in Goods, eds Palmer and McKendrick (LLP, 1998)
• ‘Reforming United Kingdom Company Law in a European Context: a Long and Winding Road’, chapter 2 in European Company Law in Accelerated Progress, ed Bartman, Kluwer, 2006

• ‘Some current issues in subrogation and contribution’, Insurance Law Journal, 11, 2000, 91-103
• ‘Denying subrogation in co-insurance and similar situations’ Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly, (2001) 193
• ‘The reform of British Company Law’, Korean Journal of Securities Law, 3, 2002, 377

New edition of Boyle & Birds' Company Law

Media Availability

Available in areas of expertise