Employed Bar Committee - Panel event

Details

Date:: 10 October 2024 6:00pm - 7:00pm

This year Gray’s Inn is proudly sponsoring the annual Employed Bar Dinner and is once again the venue and a major sponsor for the Bar Council’s Employed Bar Awards.

If you want to find out more about the Awards and the shortlist, please see The Bar Council website.

If you’re a student, pupil or barrister wanting to know more about life at the employed Bar, come along to our free panel and Q&A session where you’ll hear from barristers with diverse perspectives and experiences of employed practice.

Our speakers from the Government Legal Department, Armed Forces, law firms, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Judiciary all share a passion for the outstanding and varied work undertaken by employed barristers and are happy to answer your questions about the employed Bar. The panel promises to be a forum for discussion that will give insight into the employed Bar.

The event at Gray’s Inn will be followed by the Bar Council’s Employed Bar Awards which celebrates the wealth of talent amongst employed barristers.

List of speakers:

Maj Laura Fearnfield
Lucinda Orr
Charlotte Pope-Williams
Heidi Stonecliffe KC
HHJ Charlotte Welsh
Commander John-Paul Fitzgibbon
Sam Main

Panel Speakers

Panel Speakers

Lucinda Orr

Lucinda Orr is a Partner at Enyo Law LLP, a disputes specialist firm in the City of London. Her practices consists of commercial litigation and civil fraud. She has previously chaired BACFI and the Employed Bar Committee of the Bar Council and is a Bencher of Gray’s Inn.

Commander John-Paul Fitzgibbon

Since joining the Royal Navy in January 2005 John-Paul has deployed to all corners of the globe on a range of operations from peacekeeping and counter-narcotics to high-threat areas. As a warfare officer he navigated mine hunters, the fleet flagship and took sea command in an offshore patrol vessel operating around the UK and Northern European waters. Qualifying as a barrister in 2018 he specialises in criminal and public international law.

Holding a dual-capacity practicing certificate has given him a flavour of the self-employed bar to complement his experience at the employed bar. Having recently chaired two service inquiries into deaths of soldiers John-Paul has gained an insight into Statutory safety investigations which has given him an interest in pursuing a fee-paid judicial role in the near future. Holding the rank of Commander he is one of a few weapons lawyers in the UK responsible for ensuring that weapons systems comply with our obligations under international humanitarian law.

He sits on the Gray’s Inn Barrister Committee as a young bar and employed bar rep. Outside of his core service John-Paul chairs domestic homicide related death reviews for Essex Council; he spends his spare time surfing and horse-riding at home in Cornwall.

Charlotte Pope-Williams

Charlotte is an award winning commercial/chancery barrister who specializes in financial services disputes. She has experience of the full gamut of practice having worked in the public sector as an employed barrister at the Bank of England, in the private sector in multinational law firm, and now in a leading set of chambers, 3 Hare Court. Charlotte has a particular interest in the intersection between the provision of financial services and products by the private sector and the public sector. Her practice encompasses the full gamut of traditional commercial/chancery disputes including insolvency, contractual disputes, minority shareholder actions and professional negligence matters. Charlotte is exceptionally proud of her Vincentian heritage which is part of the reason why she enjoys and feels privileged to undertake Privy Council work originating from the Caribbean.

She dedicates a substantial amount of time to mentoring, teaching advocacy and ethics on a voluntary basis and pro bono work e.g., she is currently working on a crypto fraud case on a pro bono basis. Charlotte sat on the Court (effectively the board) of the University of Aberdeen for 3 years until August 2024, is a member of the Financial Services Lawyers Association Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee and is a self-employed member of the Bar Council of England and Wales’s Employed Barristers Committee.

Heidi Stonecliffe KC

Heidi Stonecliffe KC was called to the Bar in 1996. She practices exclusively in crime, now prosecuting cases involving multiple defendants in allegations of murder, attempted murder, firearms offences, gang violence and drug trafficking. She initially practiced in Chambers before moving to the Employed Bar in 1999. She practiced as an employed barrister conducting advocacy in Crown Court proceedings for 10 years before moving to the Crown Prosecution Service in 2006. She took silk in 2020, becoming the fourth person in the organisation’s history to do so and the first woman.

She is an elected member of the Bar Council, Chair of the Employed Barrister’s Committee and a Bencher at Inner Temple where she is Assistant Master of the Employed Bar and Assistant Master of Wellbeing. She is also an ICCA approved advocacy trainer and a member of the Advocacy Training Committee at Inner Temple. She teaches pupils and new practitioners advocacy and ethics and is also a trainer and faculty member for the SEC Advanced International Advocacy Course.

Maj Laura Fearnfield

Maj Laura Fearnfield read law at the University of Leeds, backpacked for a year, and then completed the BVC at the College of Law, Bloomsbury. She volunteered for the Centre for Capital Punishment Studies, an anti-death penalty charity, and spent three months in Lilongwe, Malawi, focussed on women on remand. Laura was called to the Bar in 2009, and made a tenant at 2 Pump Court (later merging with 187 Fleet Street) following the completion of her pupillage.

She enjoyed a solid criminal practice, predominantly based in London and Essex, until she joined the Army Legal Services in 2015. Since commissioning, Laura has advised on all areas of Army administration/policy, criminal and Service law, IHL/IHRL, including on operations overseas, and prosecuted at Court Martial. She currently advises on the most high profile discipline and novel policy cases in the Army.