Black History Month – Live Streaming of the Panel Event (Northern Circuit)

Details

Date:: 8 October 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm

“Windrush: where you were, where we are and where we are going. A Legal Perspective”.

Join our live streaming of the panel event with speakers: Chair – Master of the Bench, James St.Ville KC, Jacqueline McKenzie, Jason Pitter KC, Grace Brown and Martin Forde KC.

After the livestream, drinks and nibbles will follow.

You can also attend this live panel event at Gray’s Inn.

Panel Speakers

Panel Speakers

Grace Brown

Grace Brown is a public law barrister at Garden Court Chambers where she specialises in human rights, immigration and refugee law. She is regularly instructed in Windrush Scheme and Windrush Compensation Scheme cases. Her practice involves seeking justice for migrants and their families affected by Home Office decisions. She has helped many to regularise their status in the UK through, for example, obtaining leave to remain and citizenship. Grace is a well-regarded practitioner in relation to immigration work and is thought of as at least one of the leaders in Windrush cases. Grace is a trustee of Haringey Migrants Support Centre and the Voice of Domestic Workers. She is a mentor on the Inner Temple Mentoring Scheme where she seeks to encourage and motivate the incoming generations of aspiring lawyers. In addition to being a joint Head of Chambers (having formerly been Garden Court’s Equality and Diversity Officer for several years), she chairs its Race Task Force and is a mentor for its Access to the Bar for All Scheme. Grace is a contributing author to the leading practitioner’s textbook in immigration law, Macdonald’s Immigration Law and Practice, and the General Editor of Butterworths Immigration Law Service.

Jason Pitter KC

My specific interest in a career at the Bar was sparked by a chance meeting with (fellow Bencher) Courtenay Griffiths KC following a talk he gave, when he represented members of the local community (Chapeltown, Leeds) following civil disturbances there in the late 80’s. If anything has taught me the importance of the Inn and the Bar engaging with and reaching out to all our wider communities, it is that.

I became, it pains me to say, the first black pupil in Chambers in the North East in 1995 eventually under fellow Bencher Allistair MacDonald KC. His support were crucial in getting through the inevitable challenges being that first that presented before developing a successful practice in serious crime and professional misconduct. A career I love!

I took silk in 2014 and was elected Leader of Circuit (the first black silk of any Circuit) for 2023-2025. I am a Recorder and Bencher of the Inn with a commitment to supporting (as I was) the future of Inn as a reflection of us all.

James St. Ville

James is a barrister at 8 New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, specialising in Intellectual Property. At St. John’s College Cambridge he was a National Engineering Scholar, awarded 1st Class Honours in Electrical and Information Sciences and Engineering, a founder of the college Fund for South African Education and active in the early work of the Cambridge University Group to Encourage Ethnic Minority Applications (GEEMA).

Whilst at GEC Marconi Research, he became a chartered engineer, was leader of the Optical Communications Networks Team and acted as a mentor as part of the City & Islington College “Mentor Programme” helping black sixth-form students with the self-confidence, motivation and skills to go on to higher education. Called to the Bar in 1995, James was instrumental in founding the Inns of Court School of Law Student’s Association and has taught junior barristers advocacy as part of the Gray’s Inn Advocacy Faculty since 2004. Since 2019 he has been involved in the work of IP Inclusive, the umbrella organisation for inclusivity communities in the IP professions and is now part of its management committee.

He currently sits on the Gray’s Inn Equality, Diversity and Inclusion committee and is the Gray’s Inn Governor at the Inns of Court College of Advocacy. His private passions include playing jazz flute, fringe theatre and new music. He has been a board member of Clod Ensemble theatre and dance company since 2009 and, since 2018, chair of the trustees of the Alfred Fagon Award, the UK’s leading award for black British playwrights of Caribbean and African descent, awarded every year at the National Theatre.

Martin Forde KC

Martin Forde KC has a practice which covers all aspects of Health Law. His clinical negligence and personal injury practice is exclusively undertaken in the High Court involving injuries of maximum severity. Martin appears regularly in all the Regulatory and Disciplinary tribunals predominantly for practitioners including doctors, dentists, osteopaths, chiropractors and optometrists. In 2021 and 2020, the Powerlist named Martin as one of the most influential people for their impact on Politics, Law & Religion. He was listed in The Lawyer’s Hot 100 lawyers of 2019. In June 2020, Counsel Magazine interviewed Martin about Windrush, citizenship and diversity at the Bar as their front cover feature.