William Catlett is the founder of William A. Catlett, L.L.C., a St. Louis-based law practice that has served individuals and families for more than three decades.

Licensed to practise law in Missouri, Illinois and Kansas, he has built a career helping clients through complex legal matters including family law, bankruptcy, guardianships, probate administration, criminal defence and mental illness proceedings.

After earning his Juris Doctor from Saint Louis University School of Law, Catlett began his legal career as an associate attorney and opened his own practice in 1997. Throughout his career, he has focused on protecting clients’ rights while helping them understand the legal process. His approach is centred on clear communication, practical advice, and careful preparation rather than unnecessary complexity.

Beyond private practice, Catlett has served in several public-facing legal roles. He is regularly appointed to represent individuals in involuntary commitment and guardianship proceedings throughout the St. Louis area. Since 2017, he has also served as a Court Testimonial Trainer for resident physicians at major hospitals, helping medical professionals prepare to give effective evidence during court proceedings.

His broad experience extends beyond the courtroom. William Catlett was formerly licensed as both a title agent and a real estate broker, giving him additional insight into property and financial matters that often intersect with legal disputes.

Throughout his career, Catlett has remained guided by one principle: every client deserves honesty, transparency, and an advocate who places their interests first. His commitment to protecting legal rights and finding practical solutions has earned him a reputation as a trusted leader within Missouri’s legal community.

What first inspired you to pursue a career in law?

I’ve always been interested in solving problems that have a real impact on people’s lives. Law allows you to help someone through situations that are often stressful and uncertain. From the beginning, I wanted to build a career where I could guide people through those challenges while making sure their rights were protected.

How did your career develop after law school?

Prior to graduating from Saint Louis University School of Law, I was a law clerk at the City of St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office.  Following graduation, I worked with a private law firm as an associate attorney. Those early experiences allowed me to see the legal system from different perspectives before becoming an associate attorney. In 1997, I opened my own practice, and that allowed me to build the kind of law firm I had always envisioned.

Many attorneys focus on one area of law. Why did you choose such a broad practice?

Life doesn’t fit neatly into legal categories. Someone going through a divorce may also be dealing with financial difficulties. A guardianship matter might involve probate issues. Real estate questions can arise during family disputes. I wanted to understand how these areas connect so I could look at the whole picture instead of treating each legal issue in isolation.

Your practice includes guardianships and involuntary commitment proceedings. What have those experiences taught you?

Those cases remind you how significant the legal system can be in someone’s life. You’re often dealing with questions about personal liberty, family relationships and long-term wellbeing. They require careful preparation because every decision can have lasting consequences. That responsibility has reinforced the importance of listening carefully, communicating clearly and paying close attention to the facts.

You also train physicians to testify in court. How did that opportunity come about?

Over time, my work in mental illness proceedings led to opportunities to work more closely with medical professionals. Since 2017, I’ve served as a Court Testimonial Trainer for resident physicians. My role is to help them understand what to expect when they testify and how to communicate medical information clearly in a courtroom. It’s rewarding because effective testimony helps judges make informed decisions.

What do clients value most when working with an attorney?

I believe they want honesty. Most people aren’t looking for complicated legal language. They want someone who will explain the process, answer their questions and give them realistic expectations. I always try to speak with clients in plain language instead of talking over their heads.

You’ve been practising for more than three decades. What has stayed consistent throughout your career?

My priorities haven’t changed very much. My job is to protect my client’s interests while helping them understand the legal process. Every case is different, but that responsibility stays the same whether I’m handling a family law matter, a bankruptcy case or a guardianship proceeding.

How has your experience outside traditional legal practice influenced your work?

Earlier in my career, I was also licensed as a title agent and a real estate broker in Missouri and Illinois. That experience gave me a broader understanding of property transactions and financial matters that often appear in legal disputes. Having that background allows me to recognise issues that someone with a narrower focus might overlook.

What do you think defines good leadership in the legal profession?

Leadership starts with responsibility. Clients trust you with some of the most important situations they’ll ever face. That means being prepared, communicating openly and putting their interests ahead of your own. Experience is valuable, but integrity is what earns trust over time.

After more than thirty years, what continues to motivate you?

Every client comes to you with a different story. Even after all these years, no two cases are exactly alike. I still enjoy helping people understand their options and working towards practical solutions. Success isn’t about winning every argument. It’s about achieving the best possible outcome for the client while making sure the legal system respects their rights.

The company is leading the race to develop an all-electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) aircraft

A Bristol-based company working to develop a ‘flying taxi’ has secured a fresh $100m cash injection. Vertical Aerospace said it would use the finance package to carry out a design review, open a new energy centre for battery production and retrofit the firm’s third prototype for hybrid-electric flight testing in the first half of 2027.

The New York-listed company is also planning to fund a production facility in the UK in future.

The finance package included $40m from US-based Mudrick Capital Management and a $25m issuance from Yorkville Advisors – two major current stakeholders – as well as a $35m equity investment from new and existing investors.

It is understood the deal is being managed by bankers at Jefferies.

Stuart Simpson, chief executive of Vertical Aerospace, said: “We are focused on converting operational progress and partner engagement into continued advancement of our certification and commercialisation strategy.

“The support, reflected in these financings via new investors alongside further commitments from existing investors, demonstrates strong confidence in Vertical’s market position and progress, providing near-term flexibility to execute the next phase of our plan.”

Vertical Aerospace was set up by Ovo Energy founder Stephen Fitzpatrick a decade ago and is based on Chapel St in Bristol. The business floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021 and is leading the race to develop an all-electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) aircraft.

The latest injection of capital follows a period of operational and commercial momentum for the company which earlier this year became only the second firm of its kind to complete a piloted transition flight in a full-scale tiltrotor eVTOL.

In July, Vertical also carried out a number of demonstrations at Farnborough Air Show, including the first public piloted eVTOL flight, showcasing how its aircraft will operate in real-world environments.

Last year, the company said its aircraft could be ready for commercial use by 2028 if it secured financing. Vertical is planning to build a factory at Cotswold Airport, near Kemble in Gloucestershire, next to its existing flight test centre.

The business is already in advanced discussions with the UK government about a grant worth up to £10m to support the development of production facilities in Britain. It said this week it had also received “confirmed interest” from the Ministry of Defence in its hybrid-electric and autonomous capabilities.

Manual invoice checking often works well when a business is small and transaction volumes are predictable. The trouble starts when the same two or three people are approving supplier invoices, reconciling payments, answering internal queries and reviewing shipping charges at the same time.

Carrier invoices are particularly difficult because the final billed amount can contain adjustments that were not present when the shipment was created. A reviewer may confirm that the invoice total looks reasonable without ever testing whether the individual shipments were billed correctly.

Reviewers Start Looking for Big Errors and Miss Repeated Small Ones

After checking several pages of an invoice, people naturally begin focusing on numbers that look unusual. A $400 discrepancy attracts attention; an extra $3.80 usually does not. Yet carrier billing problems often live in those smaller adjustments.

Canada Post, for example, can reweigh and remeasure parcels during processing, with resulting corrections appearing on the bill. A small accounts team checking invoices visually may approve dozens of minor weight or volumetric adjustments because each seems plausible individually. The real problem becomes visible only when those adjustments are grouped by package type, service or shipping location. What looked like harmless rounding can turn out to be a recurring measurement or billing issue.

The Invoice Gets Checked Against Itself

One of the biggest weaknesses of manual review is surprisingly simple: the invoice often becomes its own source of truth. An employee checks the subtotal, confirms taxes, scans the shipment descriptions and makes sure the final figure adds up. Mathematically, everything works. That does not establish that the charges were correct.

A proper Canada post shipping audit needs a second version of events: shipment records, declared dimensions and weight, service selected, origin and destination information, and applicable rates or contract terms. That distinction matters because Canada Post can base charges on its own audit and place resulting price adjustments on a current or later invoice. Without shipment-level comparison, an accounts employee may verify the carrier’s arithmetic rather than verify the carrier’s billing.

Yesterday’s Exception Becomes Tomorrow’s Normal Charge

Small finance teams develop useful shortcuts. They remember that a particular surcharge appears frequently, that one warehouse tends to generate heavier parcels, or that certain shipments usually cost more. The danger is that familiarity gradually replaces verification.

Suppose the same package repeatedly receives a volumetric adjustment. Canada Post calculates parcel pricing using the greater of physical weight and volumetric equivalent, and its systems can verify parcel dimensions after induction. After seeing that adjustment for several weeks, a reviewer may simply expect it. But repetition could point to oversized packaging, inaccurate warehouse measurements or a discrepancy worth investigating. Manual checking is particularly weak at distinguishing a legitimate recurring cost from a recurring problem.

Final Thoughts

The weakness of manual invoice checking is not that accounts staff are careless. It is that carrier invoices contain more variables than a person can reliably compare line by line while handling the rest of a busy finance workload. Weight corrections, volumetric adjustments and later billing changes can all look perfectly ordinary on an invoice. For small teams, the better approach is to make review exception-driven: compare carrier charges with original shipment data, identify recurring patterns and spend human attention on discrepancies that actually need investigation.

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LONDON — Meghan Markle is expected to join Prince Harry on a return trip to the United Kingdom for the 2027 Invictus Games in Birmingham, according to a royal commentator, despite ongoing public division over the Duchess of Sussex in Britain.

The prediction follows Harry and Meghan’s recent family visit to Highgrove House, King Charles III’s private residence in Gloucestershire, where the couple met with the king as part of what has been described as an effort toward reconciliation between Harry and the royal family. The visit came as Harry continues preparing for the next edition of the Invictus Games, the international sporting competition he founded in 2014 for wounded, injured and sick military service members and veterans, which is set to take place in Birmingham from July 10 to 17, 2027, marking the first time the Games have returned to the U.K. since the inaugural 2014 London event.

Jennie Bond, a former BBC royal correspondent and longtime commentator on the royal family, said Meghan remains a deeply polarizing figure in Britain but is unlikely to let that criticism keep her away from future public appearances alongside her husband. “Her critics and her fans are equally vocal and passionate,” Bond said, adding that Meghan is likely aware that a significant portion of the British public blames her, at least in part, for Harry’s estrangement from the rest of the royal family.

Bond said that awareness means Meghan will understand that any public appearance tied either to the Invictus Games or to commemorations marking the 30th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death, which also falls in 2027, carries a real risk of renewed public criticism. Even so, Bond suggested Meghan had already signaled her willingness to join Harry at UK events this year before a separate security-related controversy disrupted those plans, and said there is every reason to expect her to attend the Birmingham Games regardless of the backlash she might face.

According to Bond, Meghan’s attendance at the Invictus Games has become something of a fixture for the couple, making her presence at the 2027 edition a near-certainty barring unforeseen circumstances. She noted that Meghan remains well regarded within the broader Invictus community itself, even if her public image in the U.K. more broadly remains contentious. Bond expressed hope that Meghan would be able to attend the Games without facing excessive public criticism, given her standing as Harry’s wife and her personal popularity among Invictus competitors and their families.

Harry has continued to publicly emphasize his commitment to the Birmingham Games as preparations intensify. Following the recent selection of South Korea to host the 2029 Invictus Games in Daejeon, Harry issued a statement reflecting on the broader growth of the Invictus movement since its founding, saying the event has demonstrated the power of sport to support recovery, challenge perceptions of disability, and build a global community rooted in resilience, service and hope. Turning to the 2027 Games specifically, Harry said organizers’ focus has shifted to Birmingham, describing it as the city that helped shape the broader Invictus community.

Speculation over the future of the Birmingham Games flared earlier this year amid reports that the event faced funding uncertainty following the loss of some sponsorship support, including from aerospace giant Boeing. Invictus Games organizers subsequently moved to dispel those concerns, confirming that discussions with Boeing and other partners regarding the Birmingham Games remained active, even as the company has continued its separate support for Invictus editions in Germany and Australia.

The Birmingham Games will be staged at the National Exhibition Centre, with the bid having been backed by the UK government through a funding commitment made via the Office for Veterans’ Affairs. Birmingham was selected over Washington, D.C., in a competitive bidding process, with organizers citing the city’s strong ties to the armed forces community, including its Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which specializes in treating military casualties and hosts the Royal College of Defence Medicine.

Harry and Meghan stepped back from their roles as senior working royals in 2020, a decision that followed public statements from the couple describing tensions within the royal family, and the two have since built an independent life based in Montecito, California, with their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. Despite that separation from official royal duties, the Invictus Games have remained one of the few consistent threads connecting the couple to public life in the United Kingdom, with Meghan having appeared alongside Harry at previous editions of the Games in cities including Sydney, Düsseldorf and Vancouver-Whistler.

With the 2027 Invictus Games now over a year away, further details on Meghan’s planned involvement, along with broader questions about the extent of any continued reconciliation between Harry and the rest of the royal family, are expected to become clearer as preparations for the Birmingham event continue. Neither Buckingham Palace nor representatives for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have issued formal public comment on Meghan’s specific plans to attend the 2027 Games.

Business activity rose in 10 of the UK’s 12 nations and regions in July, up from just three in June, according to the latest NatWest UK Regional Growth Tracker.

The survey, compiled by S&P Global from responses to its UK PMI surveys, attributed the improvement to reduced cost pressures and a general pick-up in business confidence at the start of the third quarter.

The Tracker’s headline measure is the Business Activity Index, where any reading above 50.0 signals growth and higher readings indicate faster expansion.

London topped the rankings in July with a reading of 55.3, ahead of the South East on 53.2 and Northern Ireland on 51.4. Scotland, at 47.3, and Yorkshire & Humber, at 49.1, were the only areas to record decreases in output.

The July figures mark a step change from June, when growth was confined to London (54.1), the South East (50.9) and the North East (50.8), and Northern Ireland posted the sharpest fall in output at 43.9.

Cost pressures eased in all 12 areas in July, the survey found, leading to generally slower rises in prices charged for goods and services. Growth expectations for the year ahead also recovered further across most parts of the UK.

Sebastian Burnside, NatWest chief economist, said: “Most areas of the UK enjoyed a positive start to the third quarter, seeing output levels rise as price pressures eased further from their recent highs.

“Business activity growth widened to encompass all but two of the 12 UK nations and regions monitored in July, supported in most cases by improved trends in underlying demand. Moreover, firms in most areas were increasingly upbeat about the outlook, raising the prospect of stronger growth in the second half of the year.

“Rates of increase in business costs fell sharply across the board, which reduces the upside risks to headline inflation and thereby the chances of an increase in interest rates in the coming months.

“Adding to the positive news, there were further signs that labour market conditions are beginning to stabilise, with July seeing workforce numbers fall at slower rates in most cases and even rise in some parts.”

The Bank of England held Bank Rate at 3.75 per cent at its meeting on 30 July, with the Monetary Policy Committee’s next decision due on 17 September. Expectations for rate cuts this year have shifted repeatedly as energy prices and inflation forecasts moved in response to the Middle East conflict.

The Tracker’s findings on sentiment follow separate survey data showing UK business confidence at a nine-month high as trade tensions eased.

On the labour market, the survey’s signal of slower falls in workforce numbers comes after recruitment industry data pointed to a slowing decline in UK job vacancies, led by growth in the services sector.

The NatWest UK Regional Growth Tracker covers Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and nine English regions. Survey responses are collected in the second half of each month and indicate the direction of change compared with the previous month.

Amy Ingham

Amy Ingham is a reporter at Business Matters, covering UK business news with a focus on breaking news, business policy, late payments and insolvency. She joined the magazine in 2026 after completing the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at Harlow College’s journalism school. Her recent reporting includes British Steel’s nationalisation and its impact on SME suppliers, the decline in late payments by large firms, and Insolvency Service director disqualifications. Reach her at aingham@cbmeg.co.uk.