Few had heard of Sir Terence Etherton, 57, until he became chairman of the Government’s law reform body, the Law Commission (of England and Wales). Despite ministers' "improving but still poor" track record of implementing Law Commission proposals, the commission remains influential — both for highlighting defects in the law and its concrete recommendations. Sir Terence, who went to St Paul’s School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is a Chancery judge and was in the British sabre team from 1977-80 and qualified for the Moscow Olympic Games. One of the most interesting things about him is that he was the first High Court judge to announce — in The Times in February 2006 — his entry into a civil partnership. Appointed to the Law Commission in 2006 for three years, he embarked on a wide-ranging public consultation of what laws people wanted changed — setting up the commission’s first web forum so people could have an input online.

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