The Legal 500 Bar Awards UK 2022 – Monckton in the shortlist for 13 accolades

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The Legal 500 Bar Awards UK seeks to recognise chambers as a whole and individuals (barristers of all levels of seniority), clerks, other chambers professionals and arbitrators from London and across England, Scotland and Wales.

The shortlist for the 2022 awards has just been announced.

Monckton Chambers and its members have been nominated for awards in six of the practice areas: Competition, International Law, Public Law, Sport, Tax and Technology and Data. The Set is nominated for four practice areas and nine members are shortlisted for individual awards:

 

Competition set of the year

Competition silk of the year: Daniel Beard QC, Jon Turner QC, Josh Holmes QC

Competition junior of the year: Ben Rayment

 

International law set of the year

 

Public law junior of the year: Brendan McGurk

 

Sport set of the year

Sport silk of the year: Paul Harris QC

Sport junior of the year: Fiona Banks

 

Tax silk of the year: Melanie Hall QC

 

Technology and data set of the year

Technology and data junior of the year: Ben Lask

 

The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on the 5th October 2022.

 

The full shortlist can be found on the Legal 500 website.

Jenn Lawrence to be Monckton tenant

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The members of Monckton Chambers congratulate pupil barrister Jenn Lawrence on being invited to join Chambers following successful completion of pupillage. All are delighted she has accepted.

Prior to coming to the Bar, Jenn worked in venture investments and was also an investment banker at Morgan Stanley for two years. Before that, she completed a BA in Classics at Yale University and an MPhil in Ancient Greek and Roman History at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Jenn Lawrence will become a tenant on 4 October 2022.

Christopher Vajda QC and Professor Panos Koutrakos appointed to arbitration lists of candidates by the European Commission

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In December 2020, the European Commission called for applications in connection with the renewal of the pool of arbitrators and the separate pool of trade and sustainable development (TSD) experts for dispute settlement panels under trade agreements to which the EU is a party. Candidates were examined to confirm their suitability for appointment.

Christopher Vajda QC has been appointed to the ‘List of Candidates Suitable for Appointment as Chairpersons for Arbitrations’ and Professor Panos Koutrakos appointed to the ‘List of Candidates Suitable for Appointment as Arbitrators and TSD Experts’.

The Commission will draw on this list to make proposals for the appointment of chairpersons for arbitrations and arbitrators and TSD experts in a specific case or for pre-agreed lists (rosters) under the relevant bilateral agreements with third countries.

Further information and the full lists can be found here.

Sir Christopher Bellamy QC appointed as Justice Minister

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Monckton Chambers is pleased to share the news that The Queen has approved Sir Christopher Bellamy QC’s appointment as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Ministry of Justice in the House of Lords. Her Majesty has also been pleased to signify Her intention to confer a life peerage upon Sir Christopher.

Sir Christopher is a door tenant at Monckton Chambers. He is a former judge and recently chaired an independent review of the criminal legal aid system that reported in December 2021.

While a Minister, Sir Christopher will not be accepting any work through Monckton Chambers.

Monckton Chambers is delighted to announce that the Mentoring Scheme for Under-Represented Groups will be taken forward by COMBAR from 2022 onwards

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The scheme was founded in 2020 by six sets of Chambers, and expanded to ten sets in 2021. In the first two years of the scheme about 350 prospective applicants to the Bar were matched with mentors.

From 2022 onwards, the involvement of COMBAR will enable the scheme to be expanded to more participating sets, so that more mentees can be given access to practical information about becoming a barrister and what being a barrister involves.

Monckton Chambers is looking forward to participating in the next year of the scheme, which is an important part of COMBAR’s and Monckton’s commitment to improving access and diversity in the legal profession.

The scheme pairs successful eligible candidates with practitioners for a series of one-to-one mentoring sessions. COMBAR also hopes to organise a pupillage interview and application workshop and a social event, to which all mentors and mentees will be invited, in early 2023.

In order to ensure that as diverse a pool of potential applicants is reached as possible, COMBAR will advertise the scheme through the careers departments of all English and Welsh universities with a law department, together with a number of universities in Scotland and Ireland, third sector organisations such as the Social Mobility Foundation and Sutton Trust, and commercial publications such as Legal Cheek.

Applicants will be assessed by reference to their need for mentoring and their potential to pursue a career at the Bar. A deliberate decision has been taken to give equal weighting to both of these criteria to help ensure that the scheme reaches talented applicants from the most under-represented communities who would benefit most from mentoring and guidance.

Applicants wishing to participate in the scheme are requested to complete the online application form which can be found here. The original deadline for the applications (Friday 16 September) has been pushed back. Application forms must now be received by 4pm on Friday 7 October 2022. It is hoped that applicants will be informed as to whether or not they have been accepted onto the scheme in early November 2022.

Full details of the scheme can be found at the Scheme Guidelines which can be found here. Any other questions should be directed to the following email address: socialmobility@combar.com.

Monckton warmly welcomes COMBAR’s involvement in the mentoring scheme. We are so pleased that the mentees who have participating in the first two years of the scheme have found it useful, and working with COMBAR will enable the scheme to go from strength to strength, matching more mentees with mentors.

Jeremy McBride appointed to advisory group on human rights violations in Ukraine

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The Council of Europe’s Directorate General Human Rights and Rule of Law has set up an expert advisory group to support the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. This initiative is part of its immediate assistance to Ukraine following Russia’s aggression.

The advisory group has started providing strategic-level expert advice to the Prosecutor General and her Office as part of the process of investigating gross human rights violations in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine relating to European human rights standards and international humanitarian law.

The Lawyer Hot 100 follow-up. William Hooper quizzed on his career

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The Lawyer has today published an interview with Will Hooper, who along with Monckton’s Ronit Kreisberger QC, was recognised as a 2022 Lawyer Hot 100. See website news 17 Jan 2022.

In this career quiz Will highlighted how he has as a treasured memento, his late pupil supervisor’s old desk and one piece of wisdom he likes to recall is that it is important not to forget that “judges are, ultimately, just people.” His parting advice to those who would like to do what he now does – “Think about whether you really want to do it. I have always found working at the Commercial Bar to be incredibly stimulating and intellectually rewarding, but it is not for everyone.”

You can access the full interview here.

Philip Moser QC on Advisory Committee as ELI adopts Model Rules for AI decision-making

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The European Law Institute (ELI) has adopted “Model Rules on Impact Assessment of Algorithmic Decision-Making Systems Used by Public Administration.”

Philip Moser QC acted on the Advisory Committee to the Project.

The advance of automation and of artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly affects public law decision making in different legal systems. Thus, the operative decision may have been made by an algorithm, or some other form of automated decision-making, rather than a human being. Some systems also make provision for the algorithm to learn and develop. The existence of such automated systems poses novel problems for both public and private law. The ELI’s Model Rules are a suggestion for the regulation and management of AI decision-making in the legal sphere.

The Model Rules are available for free download here.

A webinar on the outcomes of the ELI project will be held on 13 April 2022 from 12:00–13:30 CET. The webinar will be open to the public and is free of charge.

Chambers Global 2022 – Set recognition in Competition Law (UK) and 38 individuals ranked across three practice areas: Competition Law (UK), Public International Law: The English Bar and Dispute Resolution: Commercial (UK)

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Chambers Global 2022 has just been published, ranking the top lawyers and law firms in over 200 jurisdictions across the world.

Monckton Chambers is once again one of five sets to be recognised for Competition Law in UK. In addition, individual barristers, 38 in all, are ranked across three practice areas: Competition Law (UK), Public International Law: The English Bar and Dispute Resolution: Commercial (UK).

Competition Law in UK
Individual Monckton members ranked for this category are:
SILKS: Tim Ward QC, Philip Moser QC, Mark Brealey QC, Jon Turner QC, Paul Harris QC, Daniel Beard QC, Kassie Smith QC, George Peretz QC, Meredith Pickford QC, Josh Holmes QC, Ronit Kreisberger QC, Rob Williams QC and Anneli Howard QC.

JUNIORS: Alistair Lindsay, Ben Rayment, Julian Gregory, Alan Bates, Ben Lask, Philip Woolfe, Fiona Banks, Anneliese Blackwood, Laura Elizabeth John, Ligia Osepciu, Julianne Kerr Morrison, Alison Berridge, Michael Armitage, Thomas Sebastian and James Bourke.

Nikolaus Grubeck, Daisy Mackersie, David Gregory, Jack Williams and Alexandra LIttlewood are ranked in the Global Guide for the first time this year.

Public International Law in UK
Thomas Sebastian also appears in the Global Guide under Public International Law: The English Bar. Client comments include: “He is user-friendly and approachable. He combines his substantive Indian law experience with his general expertise in international law and arbitration.”

Dispute Resolution: Commercial (UK)
Steven Gee QC is also ranked, for the first time, alongside Gregory Pipe, William Buck, Drew Holiner and William Hooper, for the category of Dispute Resolution: Commercial (UK) in the Global Guide.

Competition Collective Actions: Leveraging Canadian Legal Principles in the UK’s New Regime – Paul Harris QC to moderate

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Date: Monday, March 7, 2022 | 3:30 – 8:00 p.m. GTM
Location: One Moorgate Place, Chartered Accountants’ Hall, EC2R 6EA, London

In light of the influence that Canadian jurisprudence and practice has already had on the development of collective action jurisprudence in the UK, including in the recent decision in Merricks v. Mastercard, Paul Harris QC of Monckton Chambers and the Canadian law firm McCarthy Tétrault, have assembled a panel of Canadian leaders in class actions, including competition class actions, who will engage in a lively discussion centred on the UK’s new collective action regime. Paul will co-moderate the event with Mark Sansom of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. Thomas N.T. Sutton of McCarthy Tétrault, Toronto will act as host.

The event will be an in-person presentation and fireside chat followed by a reception with light food & beverages. For further details see flyer here.

For questions about this event or additional information, please contact clientevents@mccarthy.ca.