Bill Nash qualified in 1972 and immediately specialised in the voluntary legal work sector. In addition to working in private practice he helped various voluntary organisations being a regular volunteer at the National Council for Civil Liberties (now more commonly known as Liberty).He was a founding committee member of the West Stepney Neighbourhood Law centre at the time it opened its doors as one of the growing number of Neighbourhood Law Centres in London and elsewhere.

In 1974 he joined the full time staff of Liberty serving for the next three years as the organisation’s Legal Officer. In this capacity he was involved in all aspects of that organisation's work ranging from Legal casework through to campaigning on many different topics. He headed the team which lobbied parliament when the very first Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Bill was published rightly predicting that once passed it would never be repealed.

In the casework field he quickly built up a reputation as one of the London’s leading human rights lawyers and was instrumental in preparing and presenting several cases before the European Commission of Human Rights on issues as diverse as Judicial Corporal Punishment (Birching in the Isle of Man) to the first, regrettably unsuccessful attempt to use the European Convention on Human Rights to reduce the age of consent for homosexual acts between consenting males.

In the domestic sphere his casework involved bringing the first case to examine the issue of mentally handicapped girls to have a family successfully resisting the attempt to have a fourteen year old girl given a hysterectomy.

On the policy side he wrote many of the organisations publications and gave evidence to Government Enquiries on many legal matters

After leaving Liberty he returned to private legal practice but combined this with a range of other activities becoming a consultant to the Legal Action Group and to a project conducting research in psycho legal studies at Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. He was also involved in journalism, broadcasting and lecturing on many training courses for the legal profession and at various Police Colleges

Whilst involving himself with many just causes he continued to practice in the field of criminal defence tirelessly providing his clients with high quality personal advice in all cases. He was instructed in the ”ABC” case, a major Official Secrets Act prosecution involving serious issues of free speech and the rights of investigative journalists.

Eventually under the pressure of Legal casework for which he was much in demand he decided to establish the firm of Nash and Dowell in North Islington dedicating the firm to acting in publicly funded legal work particularly specialising in criminal defence and family and child care issues .

As you would expect Bill has extensive experience in this field having defended a large number of clients charged with every known offence ranging from Murder to speeding.

Holder of the Higher Rights qualification he is able to conduct trials and hearings in the Crown Court as well as the Magistrates court. He is a duty solicitor for both local courts and police stations duty schemes.

In May 2005 Nash and Dowell solicitors joined Frank Brazell and Partners and Bill became a consultant to the firm.