Bindmans LLP

Education Law.

Partner and Head of Education Law.

Karen mainly acts for individuals although has also had experience of acting for local authorities and schools.

Her specialism is judicial review cases, with a particular focus upon education law and community care law judicial reviews. Karen has acted in many leading education law judicial review cases in the High Court and Court of Appeal, concerning vulnerable children. Instructions are also regularly received from parents of children attending independent schools. These instructions often relate to safeguarding and exclusion matters within the independent sector.

Karen’s main focus is acting for vulnerable children and adults. This work has seen her acting for a number of families in relation to special educational needs issues during childhood right through to Court of Protection matters in adulthood. It has also seen her acting in challenges against a wide variety of public bodies in addition to local authorities, such as CCGs and Chief Constables.

Karen has also acted in a number of cases concerning breaches under the Human Rights Act 1998 and discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. She has secured favourable financial settlements for clients in a number of these cases. Karen has also recently acted in a case against a police force concerning breaches under the Human Rights Act 1998 in a claim for damages connected with information on an Enhanced DBS Certificate. She has experience of representing a number of clients in relation to what appears on their Enhanced DBS Certificates.

As well as providing representation in relation to higher court cases, Karen regularly represents clients in relation to SEN Tribunal cases, admission appeals and exclusion appeals.

She is also regularly instructed in relation to disputes about school transport which is a particularly difficult area with a number of public sectors cuts to transport budgets. Karen’s interest in transport cases stems from acting for the claimant in October 2000. Since that time, she has helped many parents secure suitable transport arrangements for children with special educational needs.

Karen trained and worked thereafter as a specialist education solicitor at Hertfordshire County Council with responsibility for advising schools and the education department She qualified as a solicitor in 1997. In 1999 Karen moved to John Ford solicitors, a specialist education law firm where she headed the education law department for nearly 20 years, moving to Bindmans LLP in 2019.

Karen has obtained the Law Society Accredited Practitioner status for the category: Mental Capacity (Welfare) and is also a member of the Education Law Association.

Karen graduated from the University of Manchester in 1993 with an LLB (Hons), she then attended the College of Law, Chester, and completed her LPC with distinction in 1994.