Harriet Wistrich talks about the demands of the Charles de Menezes case

North London lawyer Harriet Wistrich, who has been representing the family of Jean Charles de Menezes — the Brazilian shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station — says she is now acutely self-conscious when travelling on the underground.

Ms Wistrich, 48, was instructed to act for the family after De Menezes, 27, was killed after being mistaken for a suspected suicide bomber on July 22, 2005. She tells People: “I deal with fairly traumatic cases all the time, so I am usually able to protect myself from becoming very disturbed, but hopefully not immune to the trauma experienced by my clients.

“The case did make me, as a regular tube traveller, slightly over conscious of what had happened.

“It has certainly been a very emotionally demanding case.” A lawyer at Camden-based firm Birnberg Peirce, where she specialises in police law and immigration detention, Ms Wistrich has been in the headlines a lot this week, following last Friday’s fraught inquest during which the jury returned an open verdict after they were denied by coroner Sir Michael Wright the option of considering unlawful killing.