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Speakers

Mr Robert Clayton, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon

Robert Clayton is a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon. He undertook higher surgical training in Trauma and Orthopaedics in Edinburgh, with fellowship training in Foot and Ankle surgery. He was appointed Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon in NHS Fife in 2010. 

Mr Clayton has a general adult and child trauma practice treating the full range of musculoskeletal injuries. He has a specialist practice in trauma and elective conditions of the foot and ankle. He accepts complex foot and ankle cases from other specialists and units. 

Mr Clayton has ten years experience of provision of expert reports, providing over 250 personal injury reports per year. He provides pursuer and defender reports across the whole range of trauma and orthopaedics. He also regularly provides reports on complex and highly specialised foot and ankle cases. He has extensive experience of low velocity road traffic accident cases. Mr Clayton provides medical negligence reports (pursuer and defender) for orthopaedic and trauma cases reflecting his own practice of general adult and child orthopaedic trauma as well as specialised foot and ankle cases. 

Mr Clayton is a council member and director of the British Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society. He is also a council member for Foot and Ankle Scotland. He is involved with research and higher surgical training.


 

Dr Penny Cooper

Penny was called to the Bar in 1990 and specialised in child abuse cases. In 2002 she moved into academia and became a professor in 2009. She co-founded and chairs The Advocate's Gateway – this free online resource is endorsed by the senior judiciary and contains best practice guides to cross-examination of vulnerable witnesses and parties.

Penny devised and researches ‘the ground rules approach’ for witness evidence and frequently advises on witness familiarisation procedures, cross-examination and case management including in challenging and high profile cases where a witness or party is affected by an autism spectrum condition/Aspergers Syndrome.

She is a visiting professor at the University of London and leads great funded research studying witness evidence. She practises law from 39 Essex Chambers London. Penny is a former governor of EWI.


 

Sarah Crowther QC

Sarah’s practice at the Bar involves frequent dealings with expert witnesses across a broad spectrum of expertise. She acts for claimants and defendants in clinical negligence cases, including spinal cord injuries, brain injuries and child birth accidents. Sarah specialises in cross-border claims where the law applicable is not English law and therefore works closely with foreign law experts on questions of liability, causation, assessment of loss and damage, contractual interpretation, limitation and apportionment. In catastrophic injury claims, Sarah has handled multi-expert quantum cases up to a value of £30m, involving accountancy, accommodation, physiotherapy, care and case management, court of protection, occupational therapy, educational psychology and investment advice. She has acted on behalf of clients living outside England and Wales and handled economic, actuarial and taxation expert evidence relevant to discount rate and complex cross-border financial management issues.

She also acts as an expert witness herself, giving evidence in respect of English law and conflicts of law issues for courts and tribunals abroad, including Scotland, Italy and Ireland.

Sarah is the vice-chair of the Personal Injuries Bar Association and a Head of Chambers at Outer Temple Chambers.


 

Tim Hardy, Arbitrator and Mediator

Tim Hardy has been mediating for over ten years, working with parties to resolve disputes across a broad spectrum of commercial sectors.

He has been recognised as a key individual by Chambers & Partners Guide to the Legal Profession for his work in dispute resolution as a litigator.

Tim is head of the Commercial Litigation team at CMS Cameron McKenna LLP and has over 30-years’ experience of dispute resolution across a range of issues including corporate transactions, partnership, financial services, funds, banking, insolvency, fraud, insurance, products, construction, property, outsourcing, IT, professional negligence and media law. As well as regularly accepting appointments as mediator, he frequently represents parties in mediation and protracted negotiations.



 

Senior Coroner Andrew Harris

Andrew has been a paediatrician, GP, medical director, and public health consultant, before his career in law. He gained an LLM in public law with a dissertation on the statutory duty of quality.

He was called to the Bar at The Middle Temple and transferred to practice as a consulting solicitor. He became a part time assistant deputy coroner in 2007 and was appointed as HM Coroner for London Inner South in 2010. He investigates deaths in five hospitals, three of which are specialist centres and several mental health institutions, which lead to his regularly instructing medical experts. The jurisdiction has 4 prisons and there is a range of travel, industrial and domestic accidents, drownings and police custody deaths, leading to about 15 jury inquests and use of a wide range of experts.

He has written on health policy, edited books on primary care needs assessment and Health Law and published on communicable disease law, NHS system failures and anonymisation. He has researched what is a natural death and published in peer reviewed scientific and legal journals. He is the author of four chapters in the leading text of Jervis on Coroners. He is Professor of Coronial Law at Queens Mary’s, William Harvey Research Institute, University of London.
 


 

Deputy Senior Coroner Henrietta Hill QC

Henrietta Hill QC was called to the Bar in 1997.  She specialises in inquests/public inquiries, discrimination law and claims against the police.  She has appeared in many of the most high-profile inquests in recent years, include those relating to Jean Charles de Menezes, Diana, Princess of Wales/Dodi Al Fayed and Alexander Litvinenko.  She also represented 22 of the bereaved families in the second Hillsborough inquests.  In that capacity she was responsible for the pathology, neuropathology and intensivism evidence.    

She is currently representing the family of Dawn Sturgess who died as a result of the Salisbury poisonings, and is Deputy Counsel to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.  Henrietta was appointed Assistant Coroner for Inner South London in 2013 and is now Deputy Senior Coroner.  She conducts inquests alone and with a jury, often involving deaths in custody or complex hospital-related deaths.  She regularly instructs experts, in particular on issues relating to psychiatric treatment in detention and in the community.


 

Frank Hughes, Partner and Head of Glasgow Office, BLM 

Frank is a partner and head of BLM's Glasgow office. He has experience in conducting insurer-related litigation across a wide arena, including to the Supreme Court. He specialises in complex loss and emerging risks, with a significant background in disease litigation and large loss. He has been an accredited specialist in personal injuries for many years and act as an expert witness in solicitors’ negligence.

For many years he tutored in Judicial Review at Glasgow University and is the author of an online resource on Scottish Court procedure.On many occasions he has presented publicly on insurance-related subjects, including on ‘insurance and Brexit’, both nationally and internationally.

He is a Member of the Regulatory Committee of the Law Society of Scotland, Scottish Representative on the UK FOIL National Executive Committee, Mentor for disadvantaged law students under the LawScot Foundation and Former Chair of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers in Scotland.


 

Duncan Hughes-Phillips, Chief Executive Officer, Base Quantum

Duncan Hughes-Phillips is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Base Quantum Limited. Duncan is a Chartered Quantity Surveyor by profession and has acted as a Quantum Expert on matters ranging from £10,000.00 up to complex mega-disputes of £250 million and above. Duncan leads a Base team that is now approaching 70 professionals who provide Expert Witness, Dispute and non-contentious appointments. 

Duncan regularly accepts instructions in relation to Adjudication, Litigation and Domestic and International Arbitrations and has provided oral testimony in Court, Arbitration and Adjudication (including remotely). 

Duncan is an experienced Expert Witness with over 15 years of experience of providing written and oral testimony, described in Whos Who Legal as "”an excellent quantum expert” who is "very dedicated, extremely hardworking and on top of every detail"”, Duncan regularly works with Barristers and Solicitors ranging from small local domestic lawyers up to some of the world’s leading firms. 

During his career, Duncan has developed clear ideas of how to work alongside this broad cross section of the legal industry, including a robust understanding of when and how it is acceptable to consider the opinions of instructing parties and other members of the legal team in developing ones opinion and when it is not.


 

Alexander Hutton QC

Alexander’s practice is focused in two fields: clinical negligence, for claimants and defendants, and all aspects of costs law.

In both these fields, Alexander is recommended in the highest band of leading silks in the directories and acts in connection with a range of clinical negligence cases, with special focus on those of the most serious nature and highest value. He has also appeared in many of the leading costs cases over the last 20 years, and was chair of the committee that introduced the now mandatory electronic bill of costs.


 
 

Jennifer Jones, Commercial Barrister

Jennifer Jones is a commercial barrister at Atkin Chambers.  She practices both domestically and internationally, with a particular expertise in  multi-party TCC litigation and in international arbitrations in the fields of large construction projects and energy disputes.  She is typically  instructed as sole counsel in multi-million-pound disputes for a range of different types of entity and her clients praise both her intellectual ability  and her emphasis on client care.

She is recommended in Chambers and Partners and The Legal 500 in the fields of Construction and Professional Negligence, and also in Chambers Global for Construction.  Contributors remark in particular that she is “very impressive and a clear thinker”, “an excellent barrister who is very responsive and commercial”, “enthusiastic and a very capable team player”, “calm, collected and unflappable” and that she has “absolutely first-rate legal knowledge”.

Jennifer’s main areas of specialisation are construction and engineering, professional negligence and energy, and she also has valuable experience in disputes concerning the construction and enforcement of guarantees/ bonds and of jurisdictional and conflicts issues, which regularly arise as incidental to other matters.  It is in the nature of construction disputes that they give rise to particularly complex strategic and factual scenarios, either because of the number of different parties and contracts, or because disputes are being fought out in different fora.  Jennifer particularly enjoys the tactical challenges inherent in managing these complicated disputes and in doing everything possible to obtain the best result for her clients.


 

Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore, Justice of the Supreme Court

In 1993, Brian Kerr was appointed a Judge of the High Court and knighted, and in 2004 was appointed Lord Chief Justice and sworn of the Privy Council.

As is tradition for the Lord Chief Justice, he succeeded Lord Carswell as the Northern Irish Lord of Appeal in Ordinary upon the latter's retirement.

On 29 June 2009, he was created Baron Kerr of Tonaghmore, of Tonaghmore in the County of Down, and was introduced to the House of Lords the same day. He was the last person to be appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary (and therefore the last to be given a law life peerage under the 1876 Act), and on 1 October 2009 he became one of the inaugural Justices of the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. He was also the youngest member, at age 61. He was succeeded as Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland on 3 July 2009 by Sir Declan Morgan.

Lord Kerr dissented from the controversial judgment of the Supreme Court in R v Gnango, in which the court held that a person could be an accessory to their own murder.

In 2014, Ulster University awarded Lord Kerr an honorary doctorate in law.


 

His Honour Judge Nigel Lickley QC

HHJ Nigel Lickley QC has been a circuit Judge at the Central Criminal Court (The Old Bailey) since 2018. He was appointed as a Deputy High Court Judge 2018.

He was called to the Bar in 1983 and took silk in 2006. He was Leader of the Western Circuit from 2010 - 2013 and was elected a Bencher of Gray’s Inn in 2013. In 2015 he was authorised to sit as a Recorder at the Central Criminal Court and was Head of Chambers for 3PB Barristers from 2015 to 2018. 

In Practice he specialised in Crime - Homicide and Regulatory Offences (Military, Consumers, Health and Safety, Revenue and Customs, Offences at sea).


 

The Hon. Mrs Justice McGowan

Maura McGowan was appointed a High Court Judge in 2014. She sits in the Queen’s Bench Division and is currently a Presiding Judge on the South Eastern Circuit – only the second woman ever to have been a Presider on that Circuit.

She was named Lawyer of the Year by Legal Business in 2014 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Chambers UK in 2016.

Maura was Chair of the Bar Council of England and Wales in 2013 – only the second woman Chair. She had previously served on the Conduct and Law Reform Committees.

She has been involved with the Inn throughout her career, starting on the MTSA and then on the Hall Committee. She was elected a Bencher in 2005 and was Chair of the Bench Selection Advisory Committee from 2015-18.

She is an Advanced International Advocacy Trainer and has taught and lectured in many jurisdictions; she is involved in international judicial training in Uganda, Mexico and (with AdvocAid) in Sierra Leone.

Maura is a consulting editor of Archbold, sits on the editorial board of the Criminal Law Review, is a Trustee of the British and Irish Legal Information Institute and a Governor of Goodenough College, London. She will be Treasurer in 2022.


 

Amanda Pinto QC

An expert in international financial wrongdoing and cases raising intricate cross-border questions, Amanda has a niche practice in some of the most high-profile cases within the field, in particular, corporate crime, fraud, money laundering and corruption cases with an international dimension. Amanda is highly-ranked by the directories in both Financial Crime: Corporates and Financial Crime.

Amanda’s expertise is sought by clients from large multi-national organisations and government agencies to small corporates, company officers and individual private clients. Her advisory work covers problems in civil, criminal and regulatory contexts and often involves money market and benchmark instruments, individual and sophisticated investor problems and collective investment schemes.

She is Chair of the Bar Council in 2020 and was Chair of the International Committee of the Bar Council 2015-2018. Amanda is regularly asked to deliver speeches and training to lawyers and the judiciary worldwide on corporate criminal liability, corruption and money laundering.


 

Glenn Robinson, BPP Law School

I have been in HE since 1987 but more specifically in the University Sector with BPP and the OU since 2000.In addition, to extensive teaching experience I have been a module leader, programme leader and director of academic training.

Over the past 20 years I have delivered papers to the ALT and UKCLE conferences and have published a textbook on EU Law for Routledge (Optimise EU Law): and no, I did not see Brexit coming, who did?

In 2013 I was shortlisted (final 6) for the Law Teacher of the Year award organised by OUP.

My key academic interests are in Public and EU Law. I am a Fellow of the HEA.

In addition, I have delivered LLB courses in Malaysia, Turkey and Pakistan.

Professionally, I am interested in exploring online teaching and I have mentored and coached countless faculty over the years.

Personally, I follow Liverpool FC, Ireland rugby, attend gigs, go to the cinema and the theatre and when possible, travel.


 

Amanda Stevens, Chief Executive, Hudgell Solicitors and Conference Chair

Amanda’s working career commenced as a manager in the National Health Service and she qualified as a member of the Institute of Health Services Management in the 1980’s.

Subsequently moving into the law, she became a solicitor in September 1990 and rose through the ranks to become partner in charge of Charles Russell’s personal injury and clinical negligence group. She joined the partnership of Irwin Mitchell in July 2010, based in their London office, with responsibility for a large team specialising in medical law and serious injury. In 2016 Amanda was appointed Group Head of Legal Practice at niche injury specialist law firm, Hudgell Solicitors. In 2017 she became the first Chief Executive of Hudgells where she continues to lead the business alongside founding owner Neil Hudgell.

Amanda was president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers in 2008/2009. She is an APIL fellow and honorary life member. Amanda has also worked as an assessor for APIL’s specialist brain injury and clinical negligence accreditation schemes as well as a Law Society panel member of their personal injury and clinical negligence accreditation schemes.

For a number of years she has been an APIL “Rehab Champion”. She was a founding member and Director of the UK Rehabilitation.