Bernard Sheridan was a pioneering lawyer who built formidable practices in media and human rights law, often forgoing the large fees he received for the former to give his time to provide his services free or at a discounted rate for the latter.

His reputation was as a fearsome negotiator with a strong social conscience who had some influence in the affairs of a number of Commonwealth countries. He also belonged to a small group of solicitors who persistently challenged the power of the music companies to secure a greater share of their enormous income for artists.

Born in London in 1927, Sheridan spent his childhood in Finsbury Park, attending Holloway Grammar School for Boys. On leaving school in 1945 he undertook his National Service, working for a time in the Army’s divorce department.

On his return he took up the offer of a scholarship at the London School of Economics. It was here that he enjoyed a political awakening as a member of a left-leaning group of students that included Bernard Levin and John Stonehouse. After university Sheridan went to law school at Lancaster Gate and was then employed as an articled clerk at the West End firm Aukin & Co.

In 1953 he set up alone as Bernard Sheridan & Co, practising first from premises in Parton Street, Holborn, and then moving to Red Lion Square, where he remained for the next 40 years. The name was abbreviated to Sheridans in 1985.

In his early years of practice Sheridan was primarily a local solicitor, taking instruction on a variety of criminal, conveyancing and legal aid matters. However, as the entertainment revolution sweeping the world at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s intensified in Britain, Sheridan spotted an opportunity to develop a niche exper-tise, counting among his clients Pink Floyd, the Bachelors, the Hollies and Kate Bush.

Operating in a developing area of the law allowed Sheridan to be creative, by his refusal to accept standard music agreements and his persistence in putting forward counter-offers. As a result, he was able to secure improved royalties and bigger advances for his clients, and was one of the first to secure the reversion of copyrights for the artists he represented. Throughout his career he maintained the integrity of his position by making it clear that he would not normally act for record companies.

He also became a highly proficient tax lawyer, and his clients came to him as a one-stop shop for every aspect of their legal work.

Early in his career Sheridan was briefing counsel such as Morris Finer, Richard Body, Peter Archer and Joseph Jack-son in legal aid work, and he continued to do unremunerative work on this basis throughout his professional career.

He quickly forged links with the Justice and Amnesty International pressure groups, and took on his first significant human rights case in 1958, travelling to St Helena in an attempt to obtain the release of a Bahraini imprisoned there for his political opposition to the ruler of Bahrain. Sheridan lost that case in the Privy Council, but was invited back, some 30 years later, to work for the defence in the island’s first murder case.

Perhaps the most important human rights case with which Sheridan was involved concerned the deportation of the Chagos Islanders to Mauritius, so that the main island, Diego Garcia, could be leased with vacant possession by Britain to the US as a military base. Sheridan led proceedings against the British Government for more than ten years in a group of cases that are still before the courts some 30 years later. Only a few days before he died the Court of Appeal found the British Government guilty of an “abuse of power” in seeking to prevent the islanders returning.

Perhaps most famously, Sheridan was involved in attempts to protect human rights in Rhodesia. In the mid-1960s Canon John Collins, head of the International Defence and Aid Fund, was campaigning tirelessly against apartheid in South Africa. He was impressed by Sheridan, and instructed him to make arrangements to provide welfare payments and legal aid for those charged with law and order offences by Ian Smith’s minority white Government. After Smith announced Rhodesia’s unilateral declaration of independence from the UK in 1965, it became harder to influence Rhodesian justice from London, so that when Sheridan secured a reprieve from the Queen for three Africans sentenced to death, they were hanged nonetheless.

In 1971 the Government of Edward Heath was close to a settlement with Smith, and Sheridan was instructed to set up an office in Rhodesia to provide legal advice to the African National Council, led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa, which successfully campaigned for a rejection of the settlement terms.

Retiring from full-time work in 1987, Sheridan remained a consultant for a further ten years. He left in 1997 to become a consultant with Jacobs Allen Hammond, where he continued to work until his death, involved in projects alongside Damien Hirst.

Sheridan was unsentimental but warm. He would often “forget” to invoice charities for his services, and ensured that his time was available to them whenever required. He was also passionate about art, visiting the Tate Gallery on his first date with Bethune Thomas, whom he married in 1955.

She survives him, along with their son and two daughters.

Bernard Sheridan, lawyer, was born on March 7, 1927. He died on May 26, 2007, aged 80