Events Calendar by Lawbore™

The annual HRLA Careers Day will be held at Goldsmiths, University of London and is primarily aimed at students, prospective lawyers and those interested in a career in human rights law. 

A range of sessions have been organised for the day, with a full programme for the HRLA Careers Day coming up shortly.

Lunch is included and refreshments will be provided during the networking session, which will begin at 5:15pm.

Online tickets are available for those who cannot attend the event in-person.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join us on the afternoon of Tuesday 29 October for a virtual student event with Mayer Brown, where we will be focusing on the skills future lawyers need to thrive.

As Legal Cheek’s reigning ‘Best law firm for training’, with consistent A* scores in this category of Legal Cheek’s annual trainee survey over a number of years, Mayer Brown has a longstanding reputation for developing excellent lawyers.

But what specifically does the firm look for in new talent and how does it help to hone those qualities? Lawyers from Mayer Brown involved in the training process will answer this question, while associates and trainees who have benefitted from their instruction will also give their take.

We’ll consider, too, how legal practice has evolved in recent years, changing corporate lawyers’ roles to a certain extent, and requiring the acquisition of new skills. And, in this context, we’ll hear from the speakers about their own career journeys to date.

The speakers

• Charlotte Hart, senior learning and development manager at Mayer Brown
• Sang Joon Park, senior associate and trainee supervisor at Mayer Brown
• Amrit Walia, trainee solicitor in the competition & anti-trust team at Mayer Brown

After a series of short talks and a panel discussion, there will be virtual networking with the speakers, Mayer Brown trainees and members of the firm’s graduate recruitment team.

Apply to attend. You’ll be asked to submit two questions for the firm.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This workshop is an introduction to using legal databases.

It will cover:

• Using Westlaw and Lexis+ to find information on legal topics
• Using the databases to find case law, legislation, articles and other resources
• An overview of other legal databases including Practical Law, HeinOnline and i-Law
• The opportunity to ask questions about using particular legal databases

How do I attend?

When you register we'll send you an email with a link to join the workshop in Microsoft Teams. You'll also get a reminder an hour before the start time.

The Microsoft Teams application enable us to make voice calls, video calls and screen sharing. To use Microsoft Teams application, you will need:

• a computer
• a reliable internet connection and
• quiet space at the time of the workshop

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The masterminds over at LEaD (Learning, Enhancement and Development) have put together a series of workshops to help you make the most of your education here at City. If this is of interest, make sure to check out the rest of the series using the link provided.

Many assignments involve working as part of a group or giving a presentation, so it's worth developing your skills in these areas.  This session will give you some pro tips and a few ways to overcome the challenges that can arise. 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

As animals, rivers, mountains, rainforests, ecosystems, and synthetic entities such as machines, AI, and robots gain recognition as subjects of rights in different parts of the world, non-human rights are becoming part of our ordinary legal landscape and vocabulary. This timely book provides a critical outlook on this rising trend at the crossroads of two of the main concerns of the 21st century: climate change and automation.In seeking to address the foundations, genealogies, philosophies, and impacts of non-human rights, the contributors to this volume examine both their potential and limitations. Are non-human rights just a mere extension of the liberal human rights discourse or, as some suggest, something else and new based on different principles? Are they a ‘revolution’ or just ‘more of the same’? Are they symptomatic of a new epochal zeitgeist or a reinforcement of capitalist, racist, colonialist, hetero-patriarchal, and speciesist dynamics? Are they a practical solution that could ‘save’ us from the multiple interconnected crises we face today, or are they an obstacle to broader social change?Drawing on a variety of perspectives – ranging from the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology to new materialism, post-human feminism, object-oriented ontology, actor-network theory, and other similar approaches informed by decolonial thinking, phenomenology, poststructuralism, Indigenous scholarship, and critical animal studies – the authors of the volume provide a rich and comprehensive overview of what non-human rights are today and how we can engage with them (and sometimes sympathize with them) without lowering our critical threshold.

Panellists:

Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa, QMUL (chair)

Costas Douzinas, Birkbeck College, University of London

Alain Pottage, Science Po, Paris

Marie Petersmann, LSE

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Looking to make your CV stand out and kickstart your legal career? Join us on the afternoon of Thursday 31 October for a virtual student event with BARBRI.

This event is for aspiring solicitors, trainees, and junior legal professionals eager to build a CV that gets noticed. Whether you’re just starting out or aiming to climb higher, we’ll help you master the essential skills that employers value most.

The speakers

• Alisa Gray, learning director at Barbri
• Holly Moore, legal advisor in the brand protection team at ITV
• Jakob Sexton, early careers acquisition and development at Brabners
• Aaron Sahota, trainee solicitor at Vinson & Elkins

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Must-have skills: From commercial awareness to legal tech, what’s important to employers
• Insider insights: Discover the in-demand skills for private practice and in-house roles
• High-impact training: Explore qualifying work experience (QWE) options and courses designed specifically for junior legal professionals to boost your CV
• Strategic tips: Learn how to position yourself for long-term success in the legal field

Whether you’re gearing up for the SQE or trying to land your next opportunity, this event will give you the tools to boost your CV and get ahead in your legal career.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Curious about commercial awareness? Want to get ahead in this key skill, but not sure where to start?

In this LawCareers.Net masterclass, sponsored by Clyde & Co LLP, Dentons, Michelmores LLP and White & Case LLP, find out from our panel of experts exactly what commercial awareness is, as well as how you can develop it and, crucially, demonstrate it in law firm applications.

Come along to hear from our panel of lawyers recruiting experts to help guide you on your legal career journey.

The panellists are:

• Vincent Fraser – associate, Clyde & Co
• Siru Chen – trainee, Dentons
• TBC – Michelmores
• Rachel Thompson – associate, White & Case 

There'll be time for questions at the end of the event, so bring yours along and get involved in the conversation!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

If you have been to one of our Employability Induction Events, you may already have met Jake Schogger. Jake is a qualified lawyer, best-selling author, career coach, entrepreneur, copywriter and consultant. He is the founder and CEO of City Career Series, a publishing company that has sold ~50,000 handbooks designed to help students secure City careers, including the best-selling Training Contract Handbook and critically acclaimed Commercial Law Handbook. Definetely someone worth listening to!

This webinar offers a comprehensive insight into the psychometric tests most commonly included in commercial law assessment processes, including Watson Glaser tests, verbal reasoning tests, situational judgment tests, logical/abstract reasoning tests, and e-tray exercises. 

In particular, the webinar will include:

• An explanation of what these tests involve and the attributes they are designed to assess.
• Comprehensive practical tips on how to pass these tests and improve your scores.
• Example questions and detailed explanations of why certain responses are correct or incorrect.
• A live Q&A.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join UKELA for their careers evening on training and working in environmental law. In person/ London.

Please bring photo ID for registration and refreshments from 4.30pm

Organisations confirmed to date:

• Linklaters
• Irwin Mitchell
• Francis Taylor Building
• 39 Essex Chambers
• Ramboll
• Environment Agency
• Edia Insurance
• LexisNexis
• Howden
• RSK

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

About the event

At the core of all societies and economies are human beings deploying their energies and talents in productive activities – that is, at work. The law governing human productive activity is a large part of what determines outcomes in terms of social justice, material wellbeing, and the sustainability of both. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that work is heavily regulated.

The new Oxford Handbook of the Law of Work examines the ‘law of work’, a term that is meant to include all aspects of labour law (employment legislation, collective labour law, workplace discrimination law, the law regulating the contract of employment, and international labour law), as well as discussions on the contested boundaries and efforts to expand the scope of some laws regulating work beyond the traditional boundaries. The Handbook offers a comprehensive review and analysis, both theoretical and critical, of these topics. It includes 60 chapters, written by leading work law scholars from all over the world, and divided into four parts. Part A establishes the fundamentals, including the historical development of the law of work, why it is needed, the conceptual building blocks, and the unsettled boundaries. Part B considers the core concerns of the law of work, including the contract of employment doctrines, main protections in employment legislation, the regulation of collective relations, discrimination, and human rights. Part C looks at the international and transnational dimension of the law of work. The final Part examines overarching themes, including discussion of recent developments such as gig work, online work, artificial intelligence at work, sustainable development, amongst others.

At the event, six of the Handbook contributors will present their chapters. These presentations will be divided into two sessions. In each session, the presentations will be followed by critical remarks from a discussant, before opening for general discussion with the audience. The Handbook’s editors will give some words of introduction and chair the sessions.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join us on the afternoon of Monday 4 November for a virtual student event with White & Case.

The theme is international arbitration. A panel of White & Case lawyers will share their insights into this key mechanism for settling major cross-border disputes.

International arbitration provides a mechanism to parties from different jurisdictions to have their dispute resolved by neutral third parties who they appoint, instead of going to court. This method is more flexible, and often more efficient than traditional litigation. One of the key advantages of international arbitration is the ease of enforcement of the arbitration award. Because of this, it is popular with the leading corporations, financial institutions and sovereign States that White & Case typically acts for.

Disputes lawyers from the firm will discuss a day in the life, and the complexity of working across jurisdictions and industries as international arbitration specialists. They’ll also reflect on their career journeys to date and offer advice to students hoping to follow a similar path.

After short talks and a panel discussion, there will be virtual networking with the speakers, trainees and members of White & Case’s early careers team.

Apply to attend. You’ll be asked to submit two questions for the speakers.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

City, University of London – Employability event

4 November 2024 6:00pm – 7:30pm followed by drinks and networking

• Venue: The City Law School Lecture Theatre, Sebastian Street, London EC1V 7HD
• Speakers:
  • Byron Spring, Pro Bono Managing Attorney, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP
  • Iain Telford, Senior Legal Technologist, Cleary X
  • Brian Kennedy, Senior Practice Innovation Manager (Real Estate), BCLP LLP
  • Jeff Westcott, Director, Practice Technology Innovation & AI, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
  • Aisha Tummon, Chief Revenue Officer, Orbital Witness

All legal careers will require some understanding of technology. But did you know that, distinct from a career as a barrister or solicitor, there are a range of legal career opportunities focused on the use of technology in legal practice? Attend this event to find out more!

Representatives from three global law firms and a legal start-up will illustrate these career paths and demystify the necessary technology skills that young legal professionals will need. Brief presentations by the speakers will lead into a panel discussion and then to Q&A with the student audience. Informal networking with the speakers will follow over drinks and snacks.

Event kindly sponsored by BCLP LLP and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

For more than five decades, Valentine Korah (1928-2023) was one of the giants of EU and UK competition law. Her scholarship and teaching framed the debate about competition law in Europe, while her international presence and network contributed to making EU competition law the dominant competition law paradigm globally. As one of the first academics to think and write about this subject in the UK she had an undeniable influence on the transformation of competition law and the training of generations of practitioners and academics who moulded this relatively new area of legal practice. Her distinct pragmatic approach argued for more flexibility in the interpretation of the law to enable innovative business practices, more extensive interdisciplinary cooperation (with economics) in the implementation of the law, and a more argumentative model of competition law scholarship and education that challenged received wisdom and the orthodoxy of the day.

This inaugural Valentine Korah conference aims to celebrate Valentine Korah's contribution to the field of competition law. The conference will also reflect on competition law's transformation during the last forty years by exploring some of the most important challenges it currently faces, such as:

• the digital and AI revolution;
• the rise of economic power and concentration;
• the reform of the provisions on abuse of dominance;
• the development of a more dynamic (innovation friendly) and inclusive competition law model;
• the intersection of competition with industrial policy; and
• the revamp of the EU antitrust federalism in an era of continuous transformation of the EU project.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Speaker: Prof Francesca Strumia, City Law School, City St George’s University of London

Discussant: Dr Oliver Garner, Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, British Institute of International and Comparative Law; Associate, City Institute for the Study of European Law (ISEL)

Chair: Dr Adrienne Yong, City Law School, City St George’s University of London

Prof Strumia’s talk will focus on her latest research output – a journal article soon to be published with European Law Open.

Abstract

How does EU free movement alter the role of the sovereign state?

While this question may not sound new, this article addresses it from a novel angle.

If from the perspective of host Member States free movement upgrades a class of migrants to the status of ‘migrant citizens’, from the perspective of home Member States free movement instead splits the class of the citizens into citizen-settlers and citizen-migrants.

The article explores how the social contract between the state and the citizen is rewritten in the wake of this latter transformation.

It articulates the duty of the states as agents for the citizen-migrants. It flashes out the implications for the relation between citizen-migrants and citizen-settlers.

And it points to the partly reflexive nature of duties of states and citizens towards non-citizen migrants.

It thus ultimately sheds light on how free movement prompts the sovereign state to embrace cosmopolitan obligations towards others ‘from within’, as an indirect effect of advancing the transnational interests of the citizen-migrants.

The findings ultimately add to the cosmopolitan statist vision of European integration, while also rephrasing some of the questions of solidarity, non-discrimination and participation that remain unanswered in the literature on Union citizenship and free movement.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The majority of City Law students commute from within, or at least near, London. For those of you getting tired of the Big Smoke, consider attending this event!

We have 11 offices beyond Big Ben – hear from our regional teams across the North and the South to understand why they love law outside of London.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join this insightful online event where we delve into how today’s transformative shift in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is heralding a new age of efficiency and profitability for law firms. Discover how AI is providing new opportunities for change by transforming how lawyers perform their roles.

From matter analysis and legal research to document drafting, time recording and billing, AI-driven solutions are reshaping traditional legal processes, enhancing the capabilities of legal practitioners, and driving law firm growth. True growth in any law firm is measured by increased profitability, but achieving consistency can be challenging. The best way to boost profits is by enhancing operational and process efficiencies. Successful law firms are able to do this by exploring new ways of working, with the clearest, most cost-effective method being the implementation of new technology.

Learning objectives

SRA Competencies A2

• Understand how AI is revolutionising legal operations
• Learn practical ways to implement AI technology in your firm
• Overcome common misconceptions and fears about AI and its challenges

Who should attend?

• This event is open to all members of the competition law community and is intended for small to mid-sized firms.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join us on the afternoon of Wednesday 6 November for an IN-PERSON student event with Ropes & Gray, at the firm’s City of London office.

Ropes & Gray is one of London’s leading international law firms for private capital clients. It advises sophisticated private capital investors and providers on fundraising, transactional dealmaking and financing, antitrust, compliance, data protection, restructuring, private equity real estate, life sciences regulation, financial regulation, tax and more.

We’ll be hearing from several of Ropes & Gray’s LGBTQ+ lawyers about life in corporate law, their experiences at the firm and their career journeys to date, including some of the obstacles they have had to overcome and the support they have received. The speakers will also offer advice for those hoping to follow a similar path.

Ropes & Gray offers 15 training contracts in London each year, and pays its newly qualified solicitors £165,000.

After short talks and a panel discussion there will be networking over drinks and canapes with the speakers, Ropes & Gray trainees and members of the firm’s trainee recruitment team.

Apply to attend. You’ll be asked to submit two questions for the speakers.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This looks set to be a highly interesting lecture, as a part of the 'The UK's Unwritten Constitution: Is It Worth the Paper It's (Not) Written On?' series by Gresham College.

The US Constitution, both in its structural element and the Bill of Rights, reflects a catalogue of colonial complaints about the British system, as well as centuries of evolution in law. Contrary to the slightly complacent attitude of the British legal authorities, most of the complaints still hold.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

On 7 November 2024, Littleton is hosting an information evening in Chambers for prospective pupillage applicants. The event is open to those currently on the GDL or Bar Course with a serious interest in Chambers’ practice areas: employment, commercial and sports law.

The evening will include talks from Members of Chambers about their practices and from Chambers’ most recent pupil, followed by drinks and nibbles.

Spaces are strictly limited and will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. Please email fschneider@littletonchambers.co.uk to confirm your place.

The event will run from around 17:00 – 19:00.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The Middle Temple LGBTQ+ Forum invites you to attend its 2024 Annual Dinner, where they will welcome Peter Tatchell as their speaker for the evening! In the MT conversation with Peter Tatchell, he will discuss the following topics:

* How he started his Human Rights work campaigning for the Aboriginal people in Australia
* His involvement with Gay Liberation Front in 1969-1974 and their campaign for law reform
* Campaign to stop Section 28 and (later) repeal it
* Foundation of the Pride movement in response to Stonewall
* Foundation of OutRage! in 1990, and their campaigns for law reform
* Campaign for Civil Partnership Act and same-sex marriage/adoption
* Work of the Peter Tatchell Foundation, including his work abroad in countries with criminal penalties for being LGBT
The LGBTQ+ Forum Annual Dinner is a chance for the LGBTQ+ members, students, and Benchers of the Middle Temple – and their Allies, guests, family and friends – to dine together, to learn, to celebrate and to get some glitter on their lapels.

Open to members of all four Inns and their guests. Paid tickets only.
 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Explore Careers in Social Justice

Join us for the next Social Justice Law Fair, a free event open to students; graduates and social justice lawyers. 

Schedule

• 15:00 - 17:00: Social Justice Fair
• 17:00 - 18:30: Career Panel on working in social justice and introduction to the 'Justice First Fellowship'
• 18:30 - 19:30: Networking

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join us on the evening of Thursday 7 November for a series of in-person careers and commercial awareness workshops with Forsters, Fried Frank, Mayer Brown and The University of Law.

The event, which is free and open to all students, takes place from 4pm to 7pm at The University of Law’s Bloomsbury campus in the heart of the City of London.

Students will attend four workshops, each 30-minutes long, delivered by lawyers at the participating firms as well as a careers expert from ULaw. Midway through the event there is 40 minutes of networking with the firms’ trainees and graduate recruitment teams over drinks and snacks.

Apply to attend.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

So, as you might have noticed, this event isn't free to attend. However - the power that be at City University (Jane Bradley-Smith) has managed to secure funding for 10 places. Don't say we never do anything for you!

Legal Aid Practitioners Group

2024 Annual Conference

Hosted and supported by Herbert Smith Freehills London

Join us on the 7th of November for LAPG’s Annual Dinner in Central London at The Folly. Join friends and colleagues from across the legal aid sector for a pre-dinner drinks reception from 7.00pm. The Annual Dinner is not restricted to conference delegates. Everyone is welcome.

Please use the link provided to see a full itinery for the conference on the 8th - there is a lot going on, with something for everyone's area of intererst. If nothing else it is a great opportunity to network with likeminded future lawyers!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

An academic conference hosted by the University of Worcester in association with the UK Constitutional Law Association

Agenda

09:30 - 10:30

• Registration & Refreshments

10:30 - 10:45

• Conference Start & Welcome

10:45 - 11:30

• Keynote

11:30 - 12:30

• Conference Panels 1 & 2

12:30 - 13:30

• Conference Panels 3 & 4

13:30 - 14:30

• Lunch

14:30 - 15:30

• Conference Panels 5 & 6

15:30 - 16:30

• Conference Panels 7 & 8

16:30 - 16:45

• Closing Remarks & Conference End

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This event will look in detail at Martyn’s Law, which is draft legislation currently making its way through parliament.

This is new legislation that will impose a duty on people who run places of worship, community centres and other publicly accessible locations to consider the terrorist risk and how they would respond to an attack.

The talk will be delivered by an expert from the Community Security Trust (CST).

CST is the charity that provides the security at 650 Jewish community buildings and 1,000 Jewish community events every year. They have for decades shared their security knowledge willingly – and for free – with groups outside the Jewish community that are vulnerable to violence, extremism or hate crime.

By the end of the session you will have gained a good appreciation of the draft legislation and how it is likely to affect your place of worship.

The event welcomes all faith community leaders, trustees and others holding legal responsibility for places of worship or faith community centres in Southend.

Please note there is no car park at the venue - parking is either along the London Road or side streets nearby.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

If you have been to one of our Employability Induction Events, you may already have met Jake Schogger. Jake is a qualified lawyer, best-selling author, career coach, entrepreneur, copywriter and consultant. He is the founder and CEO of City Career Series, a publishing company that has sold ~50,000 handbooks designed to help students secure City careers, including the best-selling Training Contract Handbook and critically acclaimed Commercial Law Handbook. Definetely someone worth listening to!

You asked and we've delivered. This will be the first webinar we've ever hosted focusing on topical legal industry news, trends and developments - a topic that we're often asked about during our events.

This event will be hosted by ex-Magic Circle lawyer Jake Schogger and Luke Mitchinson. Luke trained with Jake at Freshfields, and subsequently worked for years as a transactional lawyer at both a Magic Circle and an elite US law firm, before quitting City law to work as a headhunter. He now helps lawyers from NQs through to partners secure roles at a broad range of commercial law firms.

There will also be a Q&A, where you'll have a unique opportunity to ask Jake and Luke any of the questions that you might not feel comfortable asking law firms - pay, culture, rankings etc. Nothing is off limits, as both presenters are now totally independent from City law firms!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

???? Exciting Opportunity for Students Interested in Planning and Environment Law! ????

Are you passionate about issues like the environment, planning for housing, infrastructure development, and public law?

Join us for "How to Make a Career at the Planning & Environmental Bar" – a must-attend student event hosted by PEBA with the generous support of The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.

???? Date: 11th November 2024

? Time: 6:30pm

???? Location: The Lecture Theatre, Inner Temple, Crown Office Row, London EC4Y 7HL

At this event, you'll gain invaluable insights into building a career at the planning and environment bar – one of the most rewarding and topical areas in the legal world today.

Learn first hand from leading junior and senior barristers who will share their experiences, offer tips on securing pupillage, and discuss the exciting opportunities available.

After the talks, join the speakers for a networking reception where you'll have the opportunity for informal discussions with top barristers from leading chambers. This is your chance to connect, ask questions, and learn from the best in the field!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The Pupillage Advice Service at The City Law School presents a talk on "The Ultimate Guide to Pupillage Applications". This event is an opportunity to learn more about the Pupillage Application Process from a wide range of Chambers, how to approach writing your form, what examples to use and how to start preparing for interview. 

We will be joined by panellists from: 

• 5 Essex : John Goss, Employment and Public Law
• South Square: Imogen Beltrami, Commerical law  
• Henderson Chambers: Isha Shakir ,Public and Civil Law  
• Doughty Street Chambers: Markus Findlay, Extradition, Sanctions, Criminal, and Regulatory law.

All CLS students welcome. Refreshments will be provided in the atrium after the panel event.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Where do you want to go in your career? Are you ready to start gaining experience? What entry roles for graduates are available in the sector?

Have you explored career options within and outside the legal sector?

Studying law, you develop a range of transferable skills highly valued by employers – it is an excellent degree to give you a choice of career options. Don’t miss this opportunity to find out how you can utilise those skills in various jobs and listen to high profile speakers that have embarked on successful careers in the legal and non-legal sectors.

What you can do with a Law degree?

A law degree opens up a wide array of career opportunities beyond traditional legal practice. Graduates can become attorneys, specializing in areas such as criminal law, corporate law, or environmental law, advocating for clients in court or providing legal counsel. Additionally, a law degree is valuable in roles such as corporate compliance, careers in academia, and in various fields, including business, journalism, and government. 

What is the structure of this session?

Hosted by a dedicated Careers Consultant, our sector-specific panels aim to help you

• Learn how best to prepare your applications
• Have direct insight into the day-to-day life of this career path
• Expand your network by meeting industry professionals
• Entry routes and requirements
• Soft skills, academic qualifications and work experience that students need in order to secure a placement or graduate position

Unless directed otherwise, our panel sessions usually follow the below schedule:

• 18:00 – Event starts with a brief introduction from panellists
• 19:00 – Q&A open for students.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join us on the afternoon of  Tuesday 12 November for a virtual student event in partnership with The University of Law (ULaw) exploring the big commercial awareness themes that aspiring lawyers need to focus on as they apply for vacation schemes and training contracts.

The event kicks off with a panel discussion chaired by a Legal Cheek journalist featuring lawyers from DWF, Goodwin Procter, Irwin Mitchell, Lewis Silkin, Morrison Foerster and TLT, alongside a careers expert from ULaw.

The speakers will consider key topics including the boom in artificial intelligence (AI) and the shift to a greener economy, as well as the effect of tumultuous geopolitics – and explain how their effect shapes clients’ priorities and the day-to-day lives of lawyers. They will also discuss their career journeys and give advice to students hoping to follow a similar path.

After the panel discussion there will be virtual networking with some of the speakers, early talent team members and trainees from their firms, and ULaw campus ambassadors. This is a great opportunity to find out more about ULaw’s LLM Legal Practice (SQE1&2), designed for graduates hoping to qualify via the new SQE route, as well as its Postgraduate Diploma in Law (PGDL), which provides a pathway into practice for non-law graduates.

Apply to attend. You’ll be asked to submit two questions for the panel.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

We're excited to invite you to our second annual multi-cultural action group insight evening this year. The multi-cultural action group is the firm's affinity network for asian, black and latino lawyers. Its mission is to enhance the firm's recruitment and retention of staff, as well as foster a better understanding of the unique issues that face these communities.

Date: tuesday 12 November 2024

Time: 16:30 - 19:00

Location: 110 Fetter Lane, London, EC4A 1AY

During the insight evening, our partners, associates and trainees will share their experiences of working in the legal industry and at Weil, and give you the chance to ask questions. There will also be plenty of opportunities to network with lawyers as well as early careers and other members of the firm over drinks and canapes. 

The event will be held in our London office and travel expenses will be reimbursed.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

25 Bedford Row is hosting two pupillage open evenings in Chambers on Tuesday 12th November 2024 and Wednesday 15th January 2025.

Prospective pupils will hear from the Head of Pupillage, current pupils and some of their Members of Chambers about what pupillage with 25 entails and life at the Criminal Bar. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions in an informal Q&A session.

Please note that this is an in-person event only. To register your place, please email 25BR.Events@25bedfordrow.com, specifying which date you can attend and if you have any access requirements.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Webinar

• “The UK Budget 2024 – How Will This Impact Your Financial Planning?”
• Wednesday 13th November

Speakers:

• Mark Quaye APFS
• Director, Marque Wealth Management
• Simon Martin FPFS
• Technical Connections

Hosted on MS Teams

6pm with the meeting open from 5.30pm

Attendance at the seminar is free for everyone but to attend you must register beforehand due to limited spaces.

To register or if you have any queries please email events@bacfi.org or call 07507237218

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join us on the afternoon of Wednesday 13 November for a Legal Cheek virtual student event in partnership with Pinsent Masons.

The theme is pro bono. We’ll be hearing how global law firms use their expertise and resources to help those unable to pay for legal advice.

At Pinsent Masons, lawyers are encouraged to spend 25 hours a year on pro bono or corporate social responsibility (CSR) related matters. Speakers, including London-based technology disputes solicitor Meghan Higgins, will discuss some of the recent pro bono matters they have worked on and explain how they balance such commitments with advising commercial clients.

We’ll also hear about the way in which students, trainees and junior lawyers can use pro bono to help develop their legal skills and give an extra dimension to their professional lives, while providing a valuable service to those in need.

After short talks and a panel discussion there will be virtual networking with the speakers, Pinsent Masons trainees and members of the firm’s graduate recruitment team.

Apply to attend. You’ll be asked to submit two questions for the firm.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Talk, Crazy Golf & Networking with GSK Stockmann

Networking can be daunting, but it is a vital part of your career. Events like this aim to make it a little less scary!

Kick off the evening with a welcome drink and the chance to meet and greet. Enjoy an engaging presentation about GSK Stockmann. Learn about our operations, policies, and corporate culture, and get to know what makes us unique, followed by a round of crazy golf to continue networking in a laid-back atmosphere.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join us on the afternoon of Thursday 14 November for a virtual student event with Shoosmiths.

The theme is understanding corporate law firms. A panel of Shoosmiths lawyers from across a range of different practice areas and locations will take students on a journey through the ecosystem of finance and business, explaining law firms’ role advising companies on everything from mergers to disputes.

They’ll explore the relationship between private practice lawyers at law firms and in-house lawyers in companies’ legal teams, considering how these two groups interact on the deals that power the economy. And they will share insights on how law firms win new clients, and maintain relationships with existing ones, while also discussing some of the key principles of how law firms charge for their services and develop themselves as businesses.

The speakers will reflect, too, on their career journeys to date and give advice to students hoping to follow a similar path.

After short talks and a panel discussion there will be virtual networking with the speakers, Shoosmiths trainees and members of the firm’s early talent team.

Apply to attend. You’ll be asked to submit two questions for the firm.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Flora Page is a barrister at 23ES Chambers who prosecutes and defends serious crimes. She played a pivotal role in overturning Post Office convictions in Hamilton and others. Currently, she represents 16 former Post Office workers in the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, including Teju Adedayo, Lee Castleton, Tracy Felstead, Seema Misra, and Janet Skinner.Flora's diverse legal career began at Clifford Chance and has included significant positions at the Law Commission, the University of Law, and the Financial Conduct Authority. She is now a member of the Legal Services Board and has recently resumed her PhD research at University College London.

This lecture will delve into the intricate dynamics of power and trust in a world where trust is both a precious commodity and a daily necessity. Flora Page will explore how those without power navigate their realities and trust's crucial role in their lives.Don't miss this opportunity to gain insights from one of the leading voices in the legal field.

Tickets for students are: £11.55

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

A webinar presented by the IBA Wellbeing Commission, supported by the IBA Academic and Professional Development Committee.

In March 2024 the IBA Professional Wellbeing Commission published the Guidelines for Wellbeing in Legal Education to provide an evidence-based and sustainable approach to improving the wellbeing of law students and staff. This webinar is focused upon law teachers/faculty and others legal education providers who have an interest in student wellbeing. It will introduce the Guidelines, discuss approaches to implementation and provide practical tips for using the Guidelines.

The webinar is designed to equip legal education providers (including law school staff, continuing professional development (CPD) providers and those who provide other forms of learning and educational opportunities for lawyers) with valuable insights and practical guidance on enhancing the wellbeing of both staff and students.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The Statute Law Society Renton Lecture 2024

'When Homer nods: how courts respond to mistakes in legislation'

Lecture to be given by The Right Hon Lady Rose of Colmworth

Chaired by The Hon Mr Justice Garnham

About the speaker

Lady Rose started practising as a barrister in London in 1984 specialising in domestic and European Union Competition Law . After ten years in private practice, she joined the Government Legal Service as an advisory lawyer in central Government. She worked for 5 years in HM Treasury on financial services regulation, then in the Ministry of Defence during the 2003 Iraq war and finally in the Office of Speaker to the House of Commons. She was appointed to a number of part time judicial roles and then in 2013 joined the High Court as a fulltime Judge in the Business and Property Courts. She was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 2019 and then to the Supreme Court where she sits today.

Ticket fees Ticket price: £8

Lectures are free of charge for members of the Statute Law Society (SLS) and UCL Staff and Students.

Can't come in-person?
Book your online ticket at: https://ucl.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9B8DGktqTiCQp8YBGB_7hw

Join the Statute Law Society

The Statute Law Society is a charity which aims to promote knowledge and understanding about legislation and the legislative process. Join via www.statutelawsociety.co.uk

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Annual General Meeting

• Wednesday 20th November 2024
• The meeting will be preceded by a talk by
• Barbara Mills KC, Chair Elect of the Bar for 2025
• To be held on Microsoft Teams at 6pm

Non- members welcome
The event is free to all. If you wish to attend you MUST register in advance by email: events@bacfi.org or call 07507237218 and the Teams invitation will be sent to you.

www.bacfi.org

Nearly 60 years of Representation, Education and Support for Employed Barristers

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The development of EU space policy and the establishment of the EU Space Programme have long rested on a decoupling between the civilian aspects of space management, where the EU would play a leading role, and the use of space for defence purposes, which would remain exclusively in the hands of the Member States. Recent practice calls into question the rigidity of this separation.

On the one hand, security and defence considerations are increasingly incorporated in EU space policy and in the operation of the EU Space Programme.

On the other hand, the reaction to space threats is a major concern for the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). This dual dynamic gives rise to a peculiar model of coordination between CSDP and sectoral EU policies.

About the speaker

Alberto Miglio is associate professor of European Union Law at the University of Turin and Faculty Member of the Center for Transnational Legal Studies (Georgetown University) in London for the Fall Semester 2024.

His main research areas are differentiated integration, the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, and EU private international law.

Since 2022 Alberto has been lecturing on Common Security and Defence Policy at the Centre for Higher Defense Studies of the Italian Ministry of Defence.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The Garden Court Chambers Children’s Rights Team, in collaboration with UCL, invites you to a half-day in-person conference on Universal Children’s Day.

Programme:

2.00pm – 2.30pm: Registration, Teas & Coffee

2.30pm – 2.35pm: Welcome – Kate Aubrey Johnson, Garden Court Chambers Children’s Rights Team Convenor

2.35pm -3.10pm: Keynote Speech – Charlie Taylor, Chief Inspector of Prisons

3.15pm – 4.30pm: Workshop 1 (Choose One Session)

Challenging Discriminatory Behavioural Policies in Schools: Direct Discrimination, Children on Free School Meals & Neurodivergence

• Dr. Karen Graham, UCL
• Agness Agyepong, Black Child SEND
• Dan Rosenburg, Simpson Millar
• Ollie Persey, Garden Court Chambers

Religious Freedom, Cultural Identity, Political Expression, and School Exclusions

• Raheel Mohammed, Maslaha
• Dr. Layla Aitlhadj, Prevent Watch
• Florence Cole, Harrow Law Centre
• Grace Preston, Traveller Movement
• Amanda Weston KC, Garden Court Chambers

Understanding the School-to-Prison Pipeline: School Exclusion, Care Experience, Pupil Referral Units & Over-Criminalisation

• Alex Temple, Garden Court Chambers
• Denika Swack, GT Stewart
• Sabrina Simpson, Coram

4.30pm – 5pm: Refreshment Break

5pm – 6.15pm: Workshop 2 (Choose One Session)

Police in Schools – ‘Safer Schools’ or Criminalising Children including Criminal Records

• Florence Cole, Harrow Law Centre
• Victoria Hodgson, Specialist SENCO Teacher, London South East Academies Trust Outreach
• Ollie Persey, Garden Court Chambers
• Dr. Shabna Begum, CEO Runnymede Trust

Caring for Kids – Understanding Local Authority Duties & Protecting the Rights of Care-Experienced Children To Children in the CJS, Including The Care Needs of Children Who Are Unaccompanied Minors

• Dr. Laura Janes
• Jennifer Twite, Garden Court Chambers

Achieving a Fair Trial – Ensuring the Criminal Trial Process Meets a Child’s Needs

• Professor Helen Stalford, University of Liverpool
• Joanne Cecil KC, Garden Court Chambers

6.15pm – 6.45pm: Feedback Session 

6.45pm – 7.30pm: Plenary – How is Practice Changing Post ZA? – Mrs Justice May, Judge of the High Court of England and Wales

7.30pm – 9.00pm: Drinks & Networking

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

On 22 November 1974, the IRA planted bombs in two Birmingham pubs, killing 21 people and injuring almost 200 others.  Six men convicted of the bombings were later found to be innocent.  Fifty years on, Chris Mullin describes how he tracked down the real bombers and the implications for the British justice. Chris will speak about why miscarriages of justice are still happening despite the major changes in police process and the judicial system. After the event, he will be signing copies of his recently republished book, Error of Judgement.

‘Whoever planted the bombs in Birmingham…also planted a bomb under the British legal establishment’.   Robert Harris, The Sunday Times

‘One of the greatest feats ever achieved by an investigative reporter.’  Sebastian Faulks

‘Every so often a journalist starts an avalanche with a single gunshot’.   The Observer

‘The role of Mr Chris Mullin in this sorry affair leaves a nasty odour that will not go away’.  The Sun

Chris Mullin was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sunderland South from 1987 until 2010. In Parliament, he served as Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee and as Minister in the Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and in the Department for International Development.

Before being elected as an MP, Mullin was a journalist, training with the Daily Mirror. In this period, Mullin travelled to Russia and China. From there, his first main activity as a journalist came in the Vietnam War. He has been highly critical of the American strategy in Vietnam and has stated that he believes that the war, intended to stop the advance of Communism, instead only delayed the coming of market forces in the country. Mullin also reported from Cambodia in 1973 and 1980.

Mullin, working for the Granada current affairs programme World in Action, was pivotal in securing the release of the Birmingham Six, a long-standing miscarriage of justice. In 1985, the first of several World in Action programmes casting doubt on the men's convictions was broadcast. In 1986, Mullin's book, Error of Judgment: The Truth About the Birmingham Pub Bombings, set out a detailed case supporting the men's claims that they were innocent. It included his claim to have met some of those who were actually responsible for the bombings.

His interviewer will be Sarah Kavanagh, Head of Media and Communications at the Bar Council since 2021. Previously, she was Senior Campaigns and Communications Officer at the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). She has been the force behind the campaign to support Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney, the two NI journalists who were arrested by the PSNI under the OSA over their documentary No Stone Unturned, which investigates the collusion over the Loughinisland massacre.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Serle Court is delighted to announce details of our Prospective Pupillage evening, hosted in chambers virtually on Wednesday, 20th November and in-person on Thursday, 21st November. 

The evening will provide information about what to expect during the application process, life as a pupil at Serle Court and insights into careers at the Commercial Chancery Bar. You will be able to meet barristers of different seniorities over refreshments and hear talks from members of chambers.

Serle Court particularly encourages members of groups who are under-represented at the Bar to come and meet us.

Date: Wednesday, 20th November & Thursday, 21st November

Time: From 18:30 

Location: Serle Court Chambers, 6 New Square Lincoln’s Inn, London WC2A 3QS

To indicate your interest in both our online and in-person open evenings, please fill out the form on their website.

To learn more about pupillage at Serle Court, click here. 

We hope to see many of you on the 20th  & 21st!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

CALL FOR PAPERS

ILPC Annual Conference 2024

AI and Power: Regulating Risk and Rights       

We are pleased to announce this call for papers for the Information Law and Policy Centre’s(Opens in new window) 9th Annual Conference on 21-22 November 2024 hosted by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) and supported by the School of Advanced Studies (SAS). You can read about our previous annual events here(Opens in new window).

We are looking for high-quality contributions exploring how best to regulate and govern the use of AI, that are used across society,particularly their implications for human rights and the responsibilities of organisations. Including generative AI and other automated decision-making and data-driven systems.

Papers should address the development and future of regulation, policymaking, and governance within the United Kingdom, Europe, and/or internationally. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector papers are welcomed.

The conference organisers would like to encourage submissions from Early Career Researchers and post-doctoral researchers who have been awarded their PhD within the past five years.

Topics of interest include:

• AI technologies and innovation
• Algorithmic bias and human oversight
• Biometric identification and surveillance
• Disinformation and deepfakes
• End-to-end encryption and online content moderation
• EU AI Act
• UK Digital Information and Smart Data Bill
• Quantum computing and data security
• Virtual environments (AR, VR, the ‘metaverse’)

The ILPC Annual Conferencewill include the ILPC Annual Lecture 2024, and we are delighted to announce that this will be delivered by world-leading scholar danah boyd.

Danah boyd is a Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology and society, with an eye to how structural inequities shape and are shaped by technologies. She is currently conducting a multi-year ethnographic study of the U.S. census to understand how data are made legitimate. Her previous studies have focused on media manipulation, algorithmic bias, privacy practices, social media, and teen culture. Her monograph "It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens"  has received widespread praise. She founded the research institute Data & Society, where she currently serves as an advisor. She is also a trustee of the Computer History Museum, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and on the advisory board of Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Attendance (in person and online) will be free thanks to the support of our sponsors, although registration is required as places are limited. The best papers will feature in an open-access publication (following a peer-review process) to be published in 2025. Those giving papers will be invited to submit full draft papers for consideration by the organisers following the conference. Please highlight if you would like your paper to be considered for publication.

How to apply:        

Please send an abstract (250-300 words) and short bio to Eliza Boudier, IALS Fellowships and Administrative Officer: eliza.boudier@sas.ac.uk by the 6th September 2024. Let us know if you prefer to present in person at IALS (21 November) or online (22 November).

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will be delivered by Professor Ben McFarlane, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25

About the lecture

In his seminal Yale Law Journal articles, Hohfeld presented his general analysis of legal relations as a means to shed light on the much-discussed question of "the essential nature of trusts and other equitable interests". Over one hundred years later, that question is still fiercely debated, not least because its resolution has important practical effects, as shown by decisions such as Akers v Samba and Byers v Saudi National Bank in the UK Supreme Court and Carter Holt Harvey v Commonwealth of Australia in the High Court of Australia. In this lecture, it will be argued that, whilst significant progress has recently been made, our efforts to understand equitable property have been limited by a focus on three-party examples (as where A holds on trust for B and then transfers the trust property to C) which present a misleadingly simple picture. As Hohfeld noted, the search should be for "the right kind of simplicity" and understanding the power of equitable property requires us to look beyond such examples.

About the speaker

Professor Ben McFarlane has written widely in the law of equity, the law of property, and the law of obligations. He is Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. He was a Professor of Law at University College London from 2012-2019. His 2008 book, 'The Structure of Property Law', set out a distinctive model for understanding equitable property and he will develop that model in this lecture.

About Current Legal Problems

The Current Legal Problems (CLP) lecture series and annual volume was established over fifty five years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and is recognised as a major reference point for legal scholarship. Sign up for the mailing list to receive emails about Current Legal Problems lectures

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Serle Court is delighted to announce details of our Prospective Pupillage evening, hosted in chambers virtually on Wednesday, 20th November and in-person on Thursday, 21st November. 

The evening will provide information about what to expect during the application process, life as a pupil at Serle Court and insights into careers at the Commercial Chancery Bar. You will be able to meet barristers of different seniorities over refreshments and hear talks from members of chambers.

Serle Court particularly encourages members of groups who are under-represented at the Bar to come and meet us.

Date: Wednesday, 20th November & Thursday, 21st November

Time: From 18:30 

Location: Serle Court Chambers, 6 New Square Lincoln’s Inn, London WC2A 3QS

To indicate your interest in both our online and in-person open evenings, please fill out the form on their website.

To learn more about pupillage at Serle Court, click here. 

We hope to see many of you on the 20th  & 21st!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

A smaller pupillage fair & generally more commercial/civil sets in attendance. A must if you miss the Bar Council Pupillage fair.

Booking required (no entry unless you have booked a ticket).

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The Open Day will include talks from members of chambers, including some tenants who undertook their pupillage here, on:

• Applying for pupillage
• Pupillage structure and support
• The tenancy decision
• Life as a junior tenant at Garden Court

The Open Day will take place in person at Garden Court Chambers.

Prospective pupils will have the opportunity to meet members of chambers and the support staff in an informal environment, and ask any questions they may have about pupillage and practice at Garden Court Chambers.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

If you have been to one of our Employability Induction Events, you may already have met Jake Schogger. Jake is a qualified lawyer, best-selling author, career coach, entrepreneur, copywriter and consultant. He is the founder and CEO of City Career Series, a publishing company that has sold ~50,000 handbooks designed to help students secure City careers, including the best-selling Training Contract Handbook and critically acclaimed Commercial Law Handbook. Definetely someone worth listening to!

At this online event, we will explore the following topics:

How to ace assessment centres and virtual interviews, including:

·       Overview of assessment centres

·       Setting yourself up for success

·       Psychometric tests

·       Group exercises

·       Negotiation exercises

·       Presentations and case study interviews

·       Asking questions

·       Virtual assessment centres: the platforms

·       Virtual assessment centres: professionalism

Sound interesting? Make sure you sign up today!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

David Kennedy is considered one of the most influential international legal scholars of recent years. He is the Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School, where he teaches international law, international economic policy, legal theory, law and development, and European law. He is the author of numerous articles and books on international law and global governance. His research draws on interdisciplinary materials from sociology and social theory, economics, and history to explore issues of global governance, development policy, and the nature of professional expertise. He is best known for his books The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism (2004), Of War and Law (2006), A World of Struggle: How Power, Law, and Expertise Shape Global Political Economy (2016), and, more recently, Of Law and the World: Critical Conversations on Power, History, and Political Economy (with Martti Koskenniemi, 2023).

This event is part of the ‘Critical Legal Talks Series’, an international collaboration between the QMUL Law Department, the IHSS, CEILA, and the Group of Critical Studies in Politics, Law and Society (PoDeS) at the University of Buenos Aires.

The Series attempts to problematise the law and legal institutions from a critical and interdisciplinary perspective and provide a platform for discussion around global (in)justice for researchers aiming to bridge the Global North/South divide.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

About the lecture

This paper examines how criminal law assesses the reasons behind an offender's decision to act in violation of legal prohibitions. Adopting a cross-jurisdictional perspective that includes both German and common law traditions, it argues that Vorsatz (or mens rea) plays a crucial role in defining the wrongfulness of criminal actions, as criminal wrongdoing inherently involves wrongful intentionality by the offender. This wrongful intentionality is shaped by the interaction between an offender's motivating reasons and the normative reasons established by legal prohibitions. Rather than employing a simplistic binary approach that merely determines whether an offender’s actions align with or violate legal standards, this paper—drawing on Raz—demonstrates that different forms of mens rea or Vorsatz reflect qualitatively distinct ways in which offenders relate to what the law prohibits. Revisiting Antony Duff's distinction between "attacks" and "endangerments," the paper provides a new explanation of why these different forms of intentionality are significant at the level of wrongdoing, arguing that, due to the nomological structure of criminal law, intention (including oblique intention) and recklessness represent fundamentally different types of wrong, rather than merely different degrees of culpability.

About the speaker:

Philipp-Alexander Hirsch is a legal scholar and philosopher. He has led an independent research group on criminal-law theory at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg since 2022. His research focuses on criminal law and criminal procedure, legal philosophy and legal theory, and the history and philosophy of criminal law in the Age of Enlightenment.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Speaker is Michael Levenstein, barrister at Gatehouse Chambers

The?Pupillage Advice Service?at The City Law School presents a workshop on "How to Answer the Legal Problem Questions in Interviews" during the pupillage application process. 

This workshop will allow students to have a feel of how to approach a legal problem question and what a pupillage committee may be looking for. You will get the most out of the session if you attempt the scenario beforehand, but you will not be asked to contribute unless you wish to.  

The problem/scenario question will be added onto Lawbore Profession-Related Opportunities, which can be found on the City Hub part of the website from 4 PM on the 19th November. 

 Michael Levenstein, barrister at Gatehouse Chambers, will take students through a civil problem question.  

Refreshments will be provided in the Atrium thereafter. 

About the lecture

The United Nations (UN) International Law Commission (ILC) was established by the UN General Assembly, in 1947, to undertake the mandate of the Assembly, under article 13 (1) (a) of the Charter of the United Nations to "initiate studies and make recommendations for the purpose of ... encouraging the progressive development of international law and its codification". Since then, the ILC has contributed in important ways to the development of public international law, both on foundational issues of sources, subjects, responsibility, and disputes, and within such particular specialist fields as law of the sea, diplomatic and consular law, international criminal law, and international environmental law.

Please join us to hear from a current ILC member about the role of the institution and its work in recent years.

About the speaker:

Professor Martins Paparinskis is Professor of Public International Law at UCL Laws. He is a member of the International Law Commission, Chairperson of its Drafting Committee (2023) and First Vice-Chair (2024).

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The rights guaranteed under the Aarhus Convention enable members of the public, including environmental non-governmental organisations, to act to defend the environment in the public interest.

This lecture delves into the role and influence of the Convention and its innovative compliance mechanism. It identifies significant new developments within the Aarhus framework concerning the protection of environmental defenders and broader threats to democracy and the rule of law. It offers insights into the complex process of integrating international environmental law obligations into domestic legal frameworks and reflects on the many challenges surrounding successful implementation.

It concludes with a brief look to the future and a renewed call for effective accountability mechanisms to uphold the rule of law and to protect participatory rights in environmental matters.

Speaker

Áine Ryall - Professor at the School of Law, University College Cork

About the Speaker

Áine Ryall is a Professor at the School of Law, University College Cork where she is Co-Director of the Centre for Law & the Environment.  She is Chair of the Compliance Committee to the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention).  She is a member of the Avosetta Group of Experts on EU Environmental Law, a Vice-President of the Irish Centre for European Law (ICEL) and a member of the Academic Panel at Francis Taylor Building, Inner Temple, London.  She serves on the Audit and Risk Committee of the Environmental Protection Agency (Ireland)

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

In 2023, the Law Commission of Canada re-emerged after a 17-year hibernation. The experience of discontinuity encourages broad and deep reflection on what a Law Commission can or should do, and how it justifies its existence. In particular, the relationship between legal education and law reform might be reimagined. Each can support and enrich the other in what might be surprising or unexpected ways that confront easy or usual assumptions. The vocation of a Law Commission can and should include supporting and enriching legal education; that of a Faculty of Law can and should include supporting and enriching law reform. I suggest that law students and legal scholars can be thought of as creators of law and active participants in its evolution, while jurists engaged in law reform can be understood to do so in classrooms, community organizations, and courts, as well as in law commission offices. All are at the same time plumbers, problem solvers, and poets. By challenging what we mean by “law reform” and “learning and researching law” along these lines, we may begin to see more clearly how both domains incorporate and indeed demand creativity, evolution, dreams and hope.

Speaker: Professor Shauna Van Praagh, President, Law Commission of Canada and Professor of Law, McGill University, Quebec

Chair: Professor Carl Stychin, IALS Director

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The Rule of (Environmental) Law?: Some Reflections on the Aarhus Convention

presented by Áine Ryall, University College Cork

About the event

The rights guaranteed under the Aarhus Convention enable members of the public, including environmental non-governmental organisations, to act to defend the environment in the public interest.

This lecture delves into the role and influence of the Convention and its innovative compliance mechanism. It identifies significant new developments within the Aarhus framework concerning the protection of environmental defenders and broader threats to democracy and the rule of law. It offers insights into the complex process of integrating international environmental law obligations into domestic legal frameworks and reflects on the many challenges surrounding successful implementation.

It concludes with a brief look to the future and a renewed call for effective accountability mechanisms to uphold the rule of law and to protect participatory rights in environmental matters.

Speaker

Áine Ryall - Professor at the School of Law, University College Cork

About the Speaker

Áine Ryall is a Professor at the School of Law, University College Cork where she is Co-Director of the Centre for Law & the Environment. She is Chair of the Compliance Committee to the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention). She is a member of the Avosetta Group of Experts on EU Environmental Law, a Vice-President of the Irish Centre for European Law (ICEL) and a member of the Academic Panel at Francis Taylor Building, Inner Temple, London. She serves on the Audit and Risk Committee of the Environmental Protection Agency (Ireland)

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

About the event

The lecture will address the different processes of adjusting international human rights law to the challenges posed by new and emerging digital technology, including the re-interpretation of existing human rights to cover the needs and interests of individuals impacted by digital products and services, the introduction of new digital human rights and the expansion of obligations to respect and ensure human rights to technology companies.

Ultimately, the lecture will discuss the question of “fit” between international human rights law created to deal with a specific set of challenges posed by the modern state and the post-modern challenges posed by the political, economic and technological structures of the digital age.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

UK Law Fair (London)

Join us at the Common Room, London Law Society for an exciting day filled with networking opportunities and career advice !

Don't miss out on this chance to connect with top law firms, meet fellow law enthusiasts, and learn more about the legal industry. Whether you're a student, a recent graduate, or a seasoned professional, there's something for everyone at the UK Law Fair (London)!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Our more eagle eyed readers will have noticed this event is up twice - if you want to to this event, but dont want to go alone, why not go along with Women in Law society?

Join WIL as we head to The Law Society for England and Wales for their annual Law Fair!

Step into the heart of the legal profession with Women in Law’s exclusive trip to the annual Law Fair at the Law Society of England and Wales! This event is a powerful opportunity to connect with leading barristers' chambers and top-tier solicitors' firms, where members will network directly with esteemed legal professionals, learn from their experiences, and gain exclusive insights into the evolving world of law. You’ll have the chance to engage in meaningful conversations, explore various legal career paths, and pick up practical advice on navigating the profession with confidence.

Whether you're looking to expand your network, learn about diverse practice areas, or build relationships that could shape your future career, this trip promises to inspire, empower, and equip you with the connections and knowledge to excel. 

Dont miss out, secure your ticket today

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will be delivered by Joana Mendes, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25

About the lecture

The liberal democratic ideal that public law can keep within reviewable bounds the exercise of public power and that administrative powers are necessarily subordinated to the law has been, in the EU and elsewhere, an important condition of the legal and political legitimacy of the exercise of public power, an antidote to the authoritarian connotations of administrations. In the EU, it has turned the Court of Justice into a pillar of integration, as the ultimate arbiter of its law. This perspective, however, ignores that administrations can be constitutive of legal regimes that delimit their mandates by reference to the pursuance of public interests. Administrations can create their own powers while exercising their attributed competences: in given circunstances, they get to interpret key legal norms and they give content to the public interests that they were set up to pursue. In these cases, courts do not control administrative powers, they enable them. Control would mean disrupting the administrative system that supports the functions that administrations must fulfil in contemporary societies, in which they are deeply imbricated. This is not an anomaly, but a feature of those functions, which public law must accommodate.

In this lecture, Dr Joana Mendes will argue that a more realistic understanding of the relationship between law and administrative power, commensurate with the constitutive role of administrations, requires us to abandon the assumption that legal norms establish material (and judicially ascertainable) limits to administrative action when they enable administrations, for example, to prohibit mergers that constitute a “significant impediment to effective competition” (CJEU judgment CK Telecoms on mergers, 2023), to take the necessary and suitable actions to secure “price stability” (Gauweiler, 2014, and Weiss, 2019, on the legal boundaries of monetary policy) or “financial stability” (Fundación Tatiana Perez, 2024, on the delegation of powers to EU agencies), or to authorise pesticides because they do not have “undesirable effects to the environment”. I will foreground the role of public administration in EU integration as a continuation of the political role that administrations have in contemporary societies and the ensuing tensions with liberal constitutional premise of subordination to legal norms and judicial control.

About the speaker

Joana Mendes is Professor of Comparative and Administrative Law at the University of Luxembourg since 2016, where she teaches courses in Comparative Administrative Law and EU Law. She graduated in law and obtained a master’s degree in public law at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). She has a doctor degree from the European University Institute (Italy). Before joining the University of Luxembourg, she worked at the University of Amsterdam, where she was Associate Professor at the Department of International and EU Law and PhD Dean. She has been a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Yale Law School (2014). She has also taught as a guest lecturer at the University of Coimbra, the European University Institute, the LUISS Carlo Guidi School of Government (summer school), and at the Legal and Judicial Training Centre of Macao. She is co-founder of European Law Open and was previously co-editor of the European Law Journal. She is a member of the editorial board of the German Law Journal, of the Steering Committee of ReNEUAL (Research Network of European Administrative Law) and was member of the Council of the International Society of Public Law between 2017 and 2022.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

If you have been to one of our Employability Induction Events, you may already have met Jake Schogger. Jake is a qualified lawyer, best-selling author, career coach, entrepreneur, copywriter and consultant. He is the founder and CEO of City Career Series, a publishing company that has sold ~50,000 handbooks designed to help students secure City careers, including the best-selling Training Contract Handbook and critically acclaimed Commercial Law Handbook. Definetely someone worth listening to!

This is a highly personal, immensely practical session - delivered by an ex-Magic Circle (and current practising) lawyer - designed to equip you with the professional skills and insider insights needed to effectively navigate a corporate environment as an intern, a paralegal, or a trainee solicitor. 

In particular, we'll be covering:

• Practical career administration (e.g. choosing which team to sit in, dealing with time recording, secondments and qualification etc.)
• Interacting effectively with colleagues and supervisors
• Handling appraisals and feedback
• Time management techniques
• How to take instructions and ask the right questions
• How to approach new legal tasks 
• Key professional legal skills
• Microsoft Office tips and tricks

There will also be time for an in-depth Q&A, where you’ll be able to ask Jake Schogger about the good, the bad and the ugly!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Revision is stressful, there's no way around that. Exams aren't meant to be easy, but we can try our hardest to make it easier.

We will discuss effective, multisensory ways to revise for your exams and try some out! 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The lecture Affording Justice: Financing dispute resolution in the 21st century is to be given by The Rt Hon Lady Justice Andrews DBE, and will be chaired by James Kitching (Vice Chair, BACFI). The event is organised by BACFI (The Bar Association for Commerce, Finance and Industry) and is sponsored by LexisNexis and Marque Wealth Management.

This event is free for all to attend but you must register beforehand as there are limited spaces available.

To register or if you have any queries, please email events@bacfi.org

Crown Office Chambers look forward to welcoming prospective applicants to their Open Evening. Come and meet members of Chambers and learn about life at Crown Office.

To attend, email events@crownofficechambers.com

The lecture focuses on the role of the individual as a subject of European Union law. It explains the rights and standing of the individual before courts with jurisdiction to deal with EU law and the rights related to free movement and settlement. The first part of the lecture is dedicated to the nature of EU law within the context of international and local law as a sui generis legislation. It then evolves into how the individual participates in enacting and enforcing EU law. Reference is made to the citizen's access to the European Parliament the MEPs, and the national courts necessary to interpret and apply EU law in the domestic context. In this part, the citizen must understand the relationship between the domestic courts and the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). The third part of the lecture deals with EU institutions' access, particularly direct access to the CJEU by private citizens. Here, brief reference is made to the notion of locus standi for actions of annulment under Art 263 TFEU and access to the European Ombudsman. The final part of the lecture is dedicated to free movement and the rights of third-country nationals in EU member states. The lecture does not focus on UK law post-Brexit or on Brexit itself. However, it deals with British citizens' rights in EU countries, particularly as potential third-country permanent residents in the EU.

The event is intended to be a collaboration between the University of Malta and the IALS under the umbrella of Associate Fellows' contributions to the IALS. The lecturer is a recipient of a Jean Monnet Chair at the University of Malta. The project is about EU citizens and individuals' rights under EU law, hence the subject of the lecture. While the project is mainly implemented at the University of Malta, it does provide for outreach at other universities in Europe, irrespective of whether these are located within the EU or in third countries. As part of the fellowship opportunity with the IALS, the IALS is listed within the programme as one of the potential beneficiaries of this project.

After Brexit, the EU remains a topic of interest to the UK, irrespective of how the relationship continues evolving. Hence, the lecture interests British citizens and international students studying in the UK. The lecture is purely from a legal perspective and does not discuss political issues. 

The topic fits the strategic plan and is a way to understand the legal implications of current affairs. It is of general interest and goes beyond academia. It discusses EU citizens and individual rights from a practical perspective. 

Speaker: Prof Ivan Sammut – Associate Professor University of Malta and Associate Fellow IALS.

Chair: Dr Constantin Stefanou, IALS Taught Programmes Director and Director of the Sir William Dale Centre for Legislative Studies

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Law reformers tend to be remembered as those responsible for transforming the law; but for their involvement, the law may not have changed as it has. As academic lawyers, we are trained to look for evidence of direct links between conduct and effect. But when this evidence is not apparent, we might discard as remote campaigns which were in fact very important. These campaigns may have been neither immediately nor directly successful, but had, what I have termed, ‘inconspicuous impact’.

Inconspicuous impact is an effect upon the law that did ultimately lead to change, but not in a linear or short-term fashion. The effect is inconspicuous because it relates to efforts to change the law that are not typically viewed or credited as having contributed to reform, perhaps because those efforts were initially or ostensibly unsuccessful. The inconspicuousness of impact is especially characteristic of feminist efforts to reform the law through legal channels since historically, feminists have struggled to gain a sympathetic ear among members of the executive or judiciary. This has often left feminist pressure groups outside of formal law-making processes, but they have nevertheless been lawmakers in an indirect sense.

This lecture is about why, and how, we should pay attention to the more subtle ways in which feminists have contributed to law’s development. Using examples from the attempts of one feminist pressure group to use law as a tool for change – the Married Women’s Association – I identify reasons why impact can be inconspicuous and why this should lead to revisionist accounts of legal change. Where the norm is for women’s impact upon law to be washed from gender neutral law reports, statutes and government reports, this over time builds into a cumulative tide, whereby feminist contributions are written out of legal history and replaced by dominant, androcentric narratives. Understanding and elevating the enduring importance of such contributions means ensuring that inconspicuous impact counts in our assessment of how law came to be as we know it. As this lecture will explore, this compels us to look in different places, to widen our intellectual bandwidth, and to rethink what constitutes law reform, and impact on law reform.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Thinking about a career in one of the United Kingdom’s foremost law firms? Then LawCareersNetLIVE is a must-attend event, looking at the skills, attributes and techniques that are necessary to launch a career at this type of firm.

Our conference is for talented students (law and non-law) who want to learn more about how to build a successful career as a solicitor in a prestigious firm.

Apply now

The one-day programme features panel discussions on key topics, workshops presented by our sponsor firms and networking sessions offering the opportunity to speak to partners, trainees and graduate recruiters from our firm sponsors and overall sponsor, The University of Law.

The London conference takes place on Friday 6 December 2024, timed to maximise the benefit to students intending to apply for 2025 vacation schemes.

The event offers;

• advice on crafting excellent applications, shining at interview and forging a successful career;
• exposure to, and insight from, some of the UK's most experienced recruiters and lawyers;
• networking opportunities with those same recruiters and lawyers, and fellow delegates; and
• participation in interactive firm-led workshops, which drill down into what it's like to work in a particular practice area within a national firm.

If you want to learn more about life as a lawyer in a top firm, from the people who are already living it and those who hire them, and you have the experience and grades to back up your enthusiasm, then LawCareersNetLIVE is the perfect event for you.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Women @ the Chancery Bar Careers Event

Does this sound like you?

Are you…?

• articulate, analytical, diligent, and self-motivated?
• looking for a career which is Challenging? Stimulating? Varied? Well-paid?

Yes? Good! Sign up to the Women at the Chancery Bar Careers Event this December.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

LawCareersNetLIVE Virtual is an online careers conference that brings the valuable opportunities of attending one of LawCareers.Net’s in-person events to you at home. It's a unique chance to network with and gain insights into a stellar roster of law firms. Alongside our London and Manchester conferences, LawCareersNetLIVE Virtual is designed to widen access to leading legal employers.

Our conferences are for talented students (law and non-law) who want to learn more about how to build a successful career as a solicitor in a prestigious firm.

Apply now On LawCareers.Net

The two-day programme features panel discussions on key topics, workshops presented by our sponsor firms and networking sessions offering the opportunity to speak to partners, trainees and graduate recruiters from our firm sponsors and overall sponsor, The University of Law.

The conference takes place on the afternoons of Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 December 2024, timed to maximise the benefit to students intending to apply for 2025 vacation schemes.

The event offers;

• advice on crafting excellent applications, shining at interview and forging a successful career;
• exposure to, and insight from, some of the UK's most experienced recruiters and lawyers;
• networking opportunities with those same recruiters and lawyers, and fellow delegates; and
• participation in interactive firm-led workshops, which drill down into what it's like to work in a particular practice area within a national firm.

If you want to learn more about life as a lawyer in a top firm, from the people who are already living it and those who hire them, and you have the experience and grades to back up your enthusiasm, then LawCareersNetLIVE is the perfect event for you.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This year's annual Human Rights Day lecture will be a critical reflection on the history and politics of human rights.

Tembeka Ngcukaitobi (@Ngcukaitobi1) is a legal scholar, practicing lawyer, and advocate of the Johannesburg Bar in South Africa. He is an expert of constitutional and public law, and has written extensive about labour and land law in the South African context. He is a member of the legal team representing South Africa in a case under the Genocide Convention brought before the International Court of Justice against Israel with regards to their conduct in Gaza.

Mahvish Ahmad is Assistant Professor of Human Rights and Politics in the Department of Sociology and Co-Director of LSE Human Rights. She studies state violence and social movements, including the Global War on Terror. She recently published an article entitled Movement Texts as Anti-Colonial Theory.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Please note - while this event is free, you are required to put down a refundable £10 deposit to ensure you attend.

LawCareersNetLIVE Virtual is an online careers conference that brings the valuable opportunities of attending one of LawCareers.Net’s in-person events to you at home. It's a unique chance to network with and gain insights into a stellar roster of law firms. Alongside our London and Manchester conferences, LawCareersNetLIVE Virtual is designed to widen access to leading legal employers.

Our conferences are for talented students (law and non-law) who want to learn more about how to build a successful career as a solicitor in a prestigious firm.

Apply now

The two-day programme features panel discussions on key topics, workshops presented by our sponsor firms and networking sessions offering the opportunity to speak to partners, trainees and graduate recruiters from our firm sponsors and overall sponsor, The University of Law.

The conference takes place on the afternoons of Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 December 2024, timed to maximise the benefit to students intending to apply for 2025 vacation schemes.

The event offers;

• advice on crafting excellent applications, shining at interview and forging a successful career;
• exposure to, and insight from, some of the UK's most experienced recruiters and lawyers;
• networking opportunities with those same recruiters and lawyers, and fellow delegates; and
• participation in interactive firm-led workshops, which drill down into what it's like to work in a particular practice area within a national firm.

If you want to learn more about life as a lawyer in a top firm, from the people who are already living it and those who hire them, and you have the experience and grades to back up your enthusiasm, then LawCareersNetLIVE is the perfect event for you.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This year billions of people around the world have been to the polls. What have been the surprises and takeaways from election results?

Our panel will explore some of the issues that have come to the fore in this bumper year for politics as well as the implications of key outcomes.  

Meet our speakers and chair

Mukulika Banerjee (@MukulikaB) is Professor in Social Anthropology at LSE and was inaugural director of the LSE South Asia Centre. Her books include Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India, Why India Votes?, The Pathan Unarmed and The Sari (with Daniel Miller); and the series Exploring the Political in South Asia. She created the BBC R4 documentary Sacred Election: Lessons from the biggest democracy in the world on the 2009 Indian National Elections.

Sara Hobolt (@sarahobolt) is the Sutherland Chair in European Institutions and Professor in the Department of Government at LSE. Previously, she has held posts at the University of Oxford and the University of Michigan. She is the Chair of the European Election Studies (EES), an EU-wide project studying voters, parties, candidates and the media in European Parliamentary elections.

Peter Trubowitz (@ptrubowitz) is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Phelan US Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Registrations are now open for The Legal Cheek December Virtual Pupillage Fair 2024 on Thursday 12 December from 2-5pm.

Drawing on Legal Cheek‘s unrivalled law student subscriber and follower base, as well its extensive campus ambassador network, the Fairs give students from all parts of the UK the opportunity to meet the nation’s leading chambers from their laptops, as well as the Inns of Court and several leading law schools.

Come along to the Fairs to ask your questions directly to barristers, explore different practice areas, and pick up application tips. All of this for free and from the comfort of your own home.

Over 6,000 students from more than 120 universities have participated in our Pupillage Fairs since their launch four years ago.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Please come along to learn about pupillage opportunities, applications, and interviews, and to find out about life as a pupil and practicing barrister at South Square.

The event is open to prospective applicants with a genuine interest in the commercial bar.

We particularly encourage women and those from under-represented groups to come and get to know our barristers.

Spaces will be allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis.

 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This looks set to be a highly interesting lecture, as a part of the 'The UK's Unwritten Constitution: Is It Worth the Paper It's (Not) Written On?' series by Gresham College.

Recently, the UK has gotten into a muddle over Scottish independence and Brexit. This lecture considers what we can learn from the US, which took much of its system from the theory behind the UK structure: the King as the Executive, a Legislature made up of the House of Commons balanced by the House of Lords, and the judiciary.

It asks questions such as, what role should the judiciary play? Have the British got confused about the notion of ‘Parliamentary Supremacy’, deciding that this meant that Parliament was supreme not just to the King, but to the judiciary too?

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will argue that the idea of a fair administrative process has an under-theorised social side. This is the idea that the public’s perceived (un)fair experiences of administrative processes, particularly in everyday encounters with public services, affect their attitudes and behaviours over time. In the aggregate, this effect can potentially shape the overall outcomes of government action and, in turn, society. The lecture will show how a range of empirical evidence suggests advancing understanding of this social side of the fair process presents a viable pathway to improving the fairness, legitimacy, and efficacy of public action. However, maximising the possibilities here requires us to fundamentally change how we think about procedural fairness and its role in the pursuit of good government and a more just society.

About the speaker

Joe Tomlinson is Professor of Public Law at the University of York. He is also Director of the Administrative Fairness Lab at York and co-leads the Transforming Justice programme at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Previously, he has been Research Director of the Public Law Project, a national legal charity, and an ESRC Academic Fellow in the House of Commons. He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Law in 2023 for his research at the intersection of administrative law and socio-legal studies.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This is another lecture in the 'Lawgivers in Political Imagination' series by Gresham College.

When and why do written laws emerge in ancient societies? This lecture considers these questions in light of evidence such as the law code of Hammurabi; the earliest attestation of written laws in Greek (found in Crete); and the full-blown commitment to written laws by the Athenian lawgiver Solon. It explores how writing relates to the functions of law more generally, in light of debates in contemporary legal philosophy. 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will argue that the idea of a fair administrative process has an under-theorised social side. This is the idea that the public’s perceived (un)fair experiences of administrative processes, particularly in everyday encounters with public services, affect their attitudes and behaviours over time. In the aggregate, this effect can potentially shape the overall outcomes of government action and, in turn, society. The lecture will show how a range of empirical evidence suggests advancing understanding of this social side of the fair process presents a viable pathway to improving the fairness, legitimacy, and efficacy of public action. However, maximising the possibilities here requires us to fundamentally change how we think about procedural fairness and its role in the pursuit of good government and a more just society.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Abstract

Targeted sanctions are sophisticated tools of foreign policy, particularly the freezing of assets of designated individuals and entities, often referred to as listed, “blacklisted" or blocked persons. However, these measures face a major challenge: circumvention.

The restrictions imposed on individuals create strong incentives for evasion, and targets may find creative ways to bypass them. Family members are often used as the simplest way to evade sanctions, in particular through the transfer of assets, luxury goods and properties.

In response, both the European Union and the UK have introduced sanctions targeting family members to prevent the circumvention of asset freezes and ensure the effectiveness of sanctions.

While such family-based designations were traditionally rare, the sanctions against Russia since 2022 have seen a significant rise in their use. Numerous family members of Russian oligarchs have been designated since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

This presentation will focus on the use of these designations in the EU and UK. It will address the proportionality concerns in targeting family members through a comparative analysis of recent case law  from the ECJ and UK Courts.

About the speaker

Francesca Finelli is a Ph.D. candidate in International and EU Law at the University of Luxembourg, under joint supervision with the University of Pisa. She is supervised by Prof. Matthew Happold and Prof. Sara Poli, respectively, in the two universities.

Her research focuses on international economic sanctions, including EU restrictive measures, and she studies how different jurisdictions counter the phenomenon of sanctions evasion.

Specifically, Francesca conducts a comparative analysis of the legal frameworks in the EU, US, and UK, examining their response to circumvention. Special attention is given to circumvention schemes against targeted sanctions in the form of designations and asset freeze measures.

To further her research, Francesca has spent four months in the US (January-May 2024) as a visiting researcher at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington DC, and she is now a visiting researcher at City Law School in London (from September 2024), to delve into the responses of the US and UK jurisdictions.

Francesca was awarded 'Best Doctoral Student of 2023' by the Department of Law in Luxembourg.

Her academic interests include public international law, EU external relations law, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), and sanctions law.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Something different for you here - another lecture in teh 'Lawgivers in Political Imaginations' series by professor Melissa Lane at Gresham College.

Sophocles’ Antigone refers to “unwritten laws”, as does Thucydides’ Pericles. From the late fifth century BCE, the idea that laws are more effective when learned by memory and observation than when written down creates a distinctive current in political reflections. Plutarch even claimed the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus had prohibited the writing down of his laws.

This lecture considers how Greek authors’ reflections on the interplay between writing and orality remain relevant to modern debates about ethical formation.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will be delivered by Professor Devyani Prabhat, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25.

The idea of aliens in the immigration context is widespread. The word ‘aliens’ is found in immigration and nationality legislation as well as case law in various countries including the UK and USA. Why is this so? Was it not sufficient to call ‘outsiders’ foreigners or non-citizens? What does this concept of ‘alien’ mean in nationality law? Are there many kinds of ‘aliens’?

This lecture will look into the historical origins of the term and its subsequent conceptual development and impact on global migration through analysis of case law and archival material. It will also unpack the recent controversies in the use of the term ‘alien’ such as the efforts of the Biden administration to remove the word in US nationality processes as well as the use of the term in a pejorative manner in politics.

Is this now an antiquated word reflective of past values which should become extinct in modern nationality and citizenship contexts or does it still have a pragmatic (or symbolic) purpose not quite served by other terminology? In the age of multiple-nationality and existing free/ permitted movement regimes, perhaps an alien is just one we are yet to encounter in outer space, but we mistake for one of our own shared humanity in the meanwhile. This lecture is the story of such human ‘aliens’ in nationality law.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This looks set to be a highly interesting lecture, as a part of the 'The UK's Unwritten Constitution: Is It Worth the Paper It's (Not) Written On?' series by Gresham College.

This lecture discusses a hierarchy of rights. Is the First Amendment the most important of all, given its five foundational rights – no law respecting an establishment of religion; free exercise of religion; freedom of speech and the press; the right peaceably to assemble; the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. How might this apply to the UK?

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

• 'The Development of International Law: The Case for Revisiting Compensation’ by Professor Martins Paparinskis (Faculty of Laws, UCL)

• Chair: Prof Vaughan Lowe (Essex Court Chambers)

About this Inaugural Lecture

The development of public international law is a curious process, often easier to observe and retrospectively explain than predict and direct. Much depends on how particular specialist fields strike the balance between substance, institutions, and means of dispute settlement. Equally, much turns on choices that actors take by turning to these specialist institutions and means, the character of acts or omission that serve as catalysts for these choices, and particularly the fit within the broader context provided by generalist rules and universal institutions. The talk will consider the variety of considerations that shape the development of public international law in modern practice, with an eye to compensation for the damage caused by internationally wrongful acts, a topic entered into the long-term programme work of the United Nations International Law Commission in 2024.

About the Speaker

Martins Paparinskis is Professor of Public International Law at UCL Faculty of Laws. He is a generalist public international lawyer with a variety of specialist interests, and has published on foundational topics of public international law, such as sources, law of treaties, State responsibility, and international dispute settlement, as well as on topics in the subfields of investment law and environmental law. Professor Paparinskis is a member of the United Nations International Law Commission, and has been the Chairperson of its Drafting Committee (2023) and the First Vice-Chair (2024).

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Something slightly different for you here! This is a part of the 'Lawgivers in Political Imaginations' series by Professor Melissa Lane at Gresham College.

The Hebrew lawgiver Moses was compared to ancient Greek lawgivers such as Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Athens by the ancient Jewish authors Philo and Josephus—both writing in Greek while living in the Roman empire.

This lecture explores their views of Moses and ancient Greek lawgivers on topics including education, ethical habituation, writing, prophecy and political rule. Early modern authors would inherit and examine these lawgivers, along with others, in their own reflections on law, culture, and politics. 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will be delivered by Dr Anna Chadwick, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25

About the lecture

The analysis of prices is an activity that has traditionally taken place within the domain of Economics, and legal scholars have had very little to say about how prices are formed. Yet as the impacts of price spikes for resources like oil or gas, the effects of long-standing inequalities relating to the terms of international trade, the contentious practice of pricing of sovereign debt, or the current cost-of-living crisis all underline, prices have significant implications for a matter with which lawyers have traditionally been concerned: justice.

Legal institutions are increasingly understood by economic sociologists and institutionalist economists to be of critical importance in processes of price formation, yet there has been no systematic attempt to understand the role of law in the formation of prices. In this lecture, I build on important foundations around ‘the just price’ to evaluate the potential of developing an alternative theoretical approach to analysing prices from a legal perspective. I identify and critically discuss four different ways of analysing the role of law in processes of price formation that take as their point of departure the following intellectual traditions: I) New Institutional Economics, II) Economic Sociology, III) Law and Political Economy, and IV) Marxist Economics. In addition to offering a comparative analysis of distinct legal-theoretical perspectives on the engineering of prices, I reflect on whether it is possible to advance a legal theory of prices that is both sociologically convincing and that also has explanatory power.

Prices govern peoples’ lives and dictate courses of action to elected governments, often entrenching and exacerbating inequalities. Can a greater understanding of their legal engineering open up any avenues to making prices any more ‘just’?

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The UK’s Immigration Legislation and a Hierarchy of Modern Slavery Victimhood by Dr Marija Jovanovic

We are delighted to host Dr Marija Jovanovic as part of the Wilberforce Institute's Public Lecture programme, in association with Hull Museums.

The talk will explore a paradox and implications of the UK’s public declarations of commitment to anti-slavery action and protections embedded in the ‘modern slavery’ legislation introduced in 2015, on one hand, and the denial of such protection to certain categories of victims brought about by the recent immigration legislation, on the other.

The UK has sought to position itself as a global leader in anti-slavery action, both historically through the abolition of state-sponsored slavery in the 19th century and in its present-day initiatives to tackle ‘modern slavery’ and human trafficking (MSHT) – an umbrella term for a range of exploitative practices which persist in the 21st century despite being almost universally outlawed. Accordingly, the Modern Slavery Act 2015 is often portrayed as ‘a world-leading piece of legislation’ (UK Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2019). Similarly, the expert body in charge of monitoring States’ compliance with the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, noted that ‘[t]hrough its strong measures to identify victims, the UK is setting an important model for Europe’ (GRETA, 2021). More recently, the UK has led efforts to establish the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in order to address a widely perceived lack of political leadership and declining global attention to the issue, despite increasing numbers of victims worldwide. The UK Government has also listed tackling modern slavery as one of its five pledges to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, 2023).

In contrast with this professed global leadership in anti-slavery action, recent legal and policy developments designed to tackle ‘illegal’ migration tell a different story. Namely, following the publication of new immigration policy in 2021 (UK Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2022), the UK has adopted several pieces of legislation that exclude any victim of MSHT who either arrives in the UK ‘illegally’ (sections 22-29, Illegal Migration Act 2023) or is found to have committed a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment (known as ‘public order disqualification’ in section 63, Nationality and Borders Act 2022) from any protection available under domestic modern slavery legislation. This means that even those MSHT victims who were forced to commit criminal offences (a phenomenon known as ‘criminal exploitation’) as well as those who breach immigration rules because they were trafficked to the UK are made ineligible for any protection and support.

By denying protection and support to these categories of MSHT victims, the UK has created a hierarchy of victimhood expressly prohibited by its international legal obligations. Not only does international law binding on the UK not allow for a distinction between different categories of victims, it also expressly contains additional protections for victims compelled to commit criminal offences and those with irregular migration status.

The talk will address this tension and consider the immediate and long term implications of prioritising immigration control goals over human rights commitments and taking action against the perpetrators of this serious crime.

Marija Jovanovi? is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the Essex Law School and Human Rights Centre. Her research focuses on modern slavery and the way this phenomenon interacts with different legal regimes, such as human rights law, criminal law, labour law, immigration law, international trade law, and business regulation. She is the author of State Responsibility for ‘Modern Slavery’ in Human Rights Law (Oxford University Press, 2023). Marija’s recent work includes a research project on the experiences of modern slavery survivors in UK prisons and a legal analysis of the compatibility of the Rwanda Treaty and Act 2024 and Illegal Migration Act 2023 with the UK’s international obligations. Marija holds DPhil, MPhil, and Magister Juris degrees from the University of Oxford, and a law degree from Serbia. She previously held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in ASEAN Law and Policy at the National University of Singapore, and a Lectureship in Serbia.

This year we are teaming up with Hull Museums to offer attendees at our public lectures the opportunity to visit Wilberforce House Museum next door before they join us for the lecture. As a result all our lectures will begin at 4.30pm, directly after the Museum closes, and all will take place at our home in Oriel Chambers, 27 High Street, Hull, HU1 1NE. We are very grateful for the financial support Hull Museums is providing to the Wilberforce Institute’s public lecture programme, and hope that some of you will take the opportunity to have a look round their exhibitions and displays in advance of the lectures. Please join us for refreshments from 4.15pm onwards, and if you can, stay afterwards for a glass of wine and a chance to talk with our speaker.

There are a limited number of tickets available to attend in person. If you can’t make it in person, you can still enjoy the lectures by streaming online – please select the ticket according to your preference when you make your booking.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will be delivered by Professor Bebhinn Donelly-Lazarov, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25

‘I didn’t know what I was doing!’

‘I wasn’t myself when I did that!’

‘I had no control over what I did!’

What is missing when defendants disown their actions?

Speaker: Professor Bebhinn Donelly-Lazarov (University of Surrey)

About the lecture

A defendant who commits an assault while sleepwalking may have, in that moment, a very clear understanding of what they are doing. They may perceive their environment with clarity. They may have resolute motivation and perform their action through coordinated movements well-equipped to achieving their end. Moreover, that end may be fixed by the defendant’s own desires rather than set as a response to perceived threats or physical attack.

At first glance, if we are to consider exculpation, we are, therefore, left with a problem. The physical movements and states of mind that make up a criminal offence are present, and they are present in the typical way; straightforwardly bringing about a prohibited end. All this notwithstanding the fact that the behaviour may be entirely contrary to anything usually the agent would do.

So, what gives? In virtue of what precisely are we no doubt absolutely right to say that the defendant is not culpable? That is the question I seek to answer. Where the cognitive, emotional, and physical apparatus of typical human action (reflected by the elements of a crime) appears present, what, we might consider, is missing such that it is simply obvious a defence is due? I will say that what the defendant lacks is a very distinctive and interesting kind of knowledge; that unique self-recognition that connects any agent to the action they do such that it ‘becomes’ an action of theirs.

Above and beyond the legal elements of an offence, this knowing attachment to one’s own actions is necessary to (if never sufficient for) culpability of any sort. It is an attachment so foundational that it does not feature in the elements of a crime. It may come into view only when its absence matters.

For our sleep-walker, it matters a good deal!

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This Inaugural Lecture will be on ‘Family Law As Social Policy: Taking Family Problems Upstream’ and delivered by Professor Rob George.

About this Inaugural Lecture

In recent years, family law legislation has often been a focal point for reforms which have aimed as much at changing the societal attitudes and behaviours of family members as affecting their statutory entitlements or how the courts approach family law cases. There has been a tension in the approach of politicians between, on the one hand, restricting access to the courts and thus to law for family disputes and, on the other, using family law as a tool of policy to influence how family members think and behave in relation to one another. This lecture situates family law as a tool of social policy, but one which is often not up to or not suited to the job. Post-separation parenting arrangements are a key example: using family law, as it now does, to stipulate that the involvement of both parents in a child’s life is likely to promote their welfare comes too late to make effective change. The problem needs to be taken ‘upstream’, considering the policy factors that influence the way in which parenting was arranged prior to parental separation rather than focusing only on arrangements made post-separation. Policy factors that affect family problems such as this include parental leave and flexible working policies, situated as part of employment law; housing policy, seen as part of social welfare law; and provision of services such as mental health support, part of healthcare law (if seen as a concern of law at all). This lecture seeks to reposition these upstream policy issues as the central considerations for those interested in effecting societal change to family life.

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This looks set to be a highly interesting lecture, as a part of the 'The UK's Unwritten Constitution: Is It Worth the Paper It's (Not) Written On?' series by Gresham College.

Regarding the US Constitution, there is a major split between the Originalists (typically conservatives) and those who believe in an organic document that grows with the times. There have been enormous changes since 1789 – the internet is just one example – and the document must change one way or the other.

This lecture explores some of the unenumerated rights that might be added. These are not without their own subjective cultural elements. For example, Europeans are much more focused on ‘privacy’ than Americans, and it is debatable whether free speech is truly consistent with privacy.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This looks set to be a highly interesting lecture, as a part of the 'The UK's Unwritten Constitution: Is It Worth the Paper It's (Not) Written On?' series by Gresham College.

The U.S. Constitution had to be formed through debate before it could be ratified. Mirroring this, a British constitution must emerge through debates held by the next generation.

This lecture indicates schools are a good environment to foster this. For students, there are many contentious issues that tap into discussions at the heart of writing a constitution. Students being punished for swearing raises questions of limits to free speech. Students wishing to intervene when an unpopular peer is bullied would be empowered by constitutional duty obliging them to do so.

Schools tend to be authoritarian institutions, benevolent or otherwise, and can either provoke students to develop ideas on power structures and recognise the need for their own rights and duties, or condition them to accept the status quo.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Something slightly different for you here! This is a part of the 'Lawgivers in Political Imaginations' series by Professor Melissa Lane at Gresham College.

For many modern thinkers, the lawgiver has been important as a founding figure of civic identity and cultural values. Rousseau analysed the legacies of Solon and Lycurgus, believing in the need for a lawgiver to make a true social contract possible. By contrast, Nietzsche felt it necessary to seek a lawgiver in history who was also a poet and prophet.

This lecture uses their perspectives and others to explore how the figure of the lawgiver has encapsulated key debates in modern political philosophy.

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Something slightly different for you here! This is a part of the 'Lawgivers in Political Imaginations' series by Professor Melissa Lane at Gresham College.

How have lawgivers featured in modern revolutions?

This lecture considers key moments in revolutions, including seventeenth-century Britain, eighteenth-century France and (what would become) the United States, and twentieth-century Iran.

The appeal to lawgivers (including ancient ones from many cultures) in revolutionary visions and in consolidating new constitutions is a striking feature of modern politics.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).