Guildhall Chambers

One of the UK’s leading multidisciplinary sets with a national reputation for formidable advice, advocacy and client service. Chambers handles the full spectrum of crime and specialises in key civil practice areas. The barristers are consistently top ranked and recognised as leading specialists in their fields. Chambers is renowned for its client-focussed approach offering professionalism and approachability with a strong commitment to efficient case management and exceptional client care.

Types of work undertaken
Banking and financial services: Expertise includes disputes such as mortgages and charges, guarantees and indemnities, other third-party securities, issues relating to the Consumer Credit Act, receiverships and retail banking transaction. Regulation and Compliance, Data Protection Act & GDPR, consumer and business finance issue, lender and bank liabilities, cryptocurrencies and cryptoassets, crowd funding and peer to peer lending.

Clinical negligence: The team covers all aspects of clinical negligence litigation from minor to catastrophic claims acting for public and privately funded claimants, the NHSLA, NWSSP, Legal and Risk Services, Medical Defence organisations, and commercial providers of care. The team has specialist knowledge in associated fields such as professional disciplinary hearings, professional negligence, inquests and costs.

Commercial litigation: The team is nationally recognised and handles the full spectrum of commercial dispute resolution cases at all levels, from small claims through to the most serious and high value claims. The team benefits from experience of work in a wide variety of industry sectors and are recognised as having strong sector expertise for commercial disputes. Key areas of practice include breach of contract, banking and finance, civil fraud and recovery of assets, injunctions, competition law, consumer credit, corporate and partnership, professional negligence, sale and supply of goods and services and TCC.

Company law: The team handles a wide range of company and commercial disputes including the interpretation and dispute resolution of commercial contracts and partnership and joint ventures, shareholder agreements, the allotment and transfer of shares, directors’ duties, shareholder disputes, derivative claims, just and equitable windings up. We have significant experience handling unfair prejudice disputes and director qualification proceedings.

Costs and litigation funding: The team includes some of the most prominent regional specialists in this field, offering advice and representation across the whole breadth of costs procedure and law. Members provide advice and representation in respect to the full range of inter partes costs disputes and costs issues arising in litigation generally. The work of our specialists includes advice and representation in respect to assessments of costs involving issues of principle and of high value, costs appeals, and costs management. The teams experience and expertise also covers advising on enforceability of funding arrangements, issues of coverage and indemnity relating to BTE and ATE insurance, solicitor – own client disputes and professional negligence cases relating to costs and funding.

Crime: One of the foremost criminal sets in the country and the leading set on the Western Circuit, the crime team has five silks and 20 juniors. The team provides specialist expertise in all areas of criminal defence and prosecution work from murder, serious sexual allegations, slavery, terrorism and serious fraud, to road traffic cases, drug and vehicle crime. Chambers has an outstanding reputation for the provision of a complete, efficient, effective and genuinely top quality service. Excellence in barristers and clerks alike ensures that chambers attracts instructions from prosecution authorities and leading firms of solicitors nationwide.

Employment and discrimination: The team offers a depth of expertise and quality of service across the full range of employment and discrimination issues including unfair, constructive and wrongful dismissal, contractual disputes, actionable discrimination, complex discrimination, whistleblowing and TUPE matters, breach of confidence, equal pay employment status, redundancy and restructuring, professional discipline, industrial action and injunctions. Our members regularly appear in the EAT and Court of Appeal and in front of a variety of professional disciplinary bodies, such as the GMC and NMC.

Insolvency: Guildhall Chambers is recognised as ‘a centre of excellence for insolvency counsel’ and ’the go-to set for insolvency matters in the West of the country’. The team provides specialist advice and advocacy on all aspects of insolvency and company law, including corporate, partnership and personal insolvency, corporate and partnership break-up, and company directors and disqualification. Several members of our team are members of the Attorney General’s Panel of Junior Counsel to the Crown, and we receive instructions from Government departments, leading firms of insolvency lawyers, insolvency office holders and regulatory bodies. Team members also advise on non-contentious insolvency issues, corporate recovery and turnaround.

Personal injury: The team is highly regarded for their expert handling of a wide range of high-value and complex personal injury claims. Work includes serious brain injury, chronic pain, psychological injury, product liability, workplace accidents, public liability, highways, road traffic accidents – with particular experience of acting for insurers in complex group claims, inquests and industrial disease. Specialisms also include animals act claims, sports related injuries and members regularly advise on related costs and professional negligence claims.

Professional negligence and indemnity: Chambers provides expertise in disciplinary proceedings across all professions and at all levels, from healthcare and education sectors, to assisting police officers. We handle employers’ internal disciplinary procedures and proceedings before regulators. The team represents both claimants and defendants / insurers in relation to the full range of professional advisers, including solicitors, accountants, constructions professionals, financial advisors, surveyors, valuers and brokers.

Property, estates and planning: Chambers advises and act in all forms of real property law including landlord and tenant, agriculture, trusts, inheritance, wills and probate, estates and commons, towns and village greens, planning and property-related insolvency and professional negligence cases associated with property transactions. Chambers also handles the full range of planning matters offering advisory and advocacy services in the full range of tribunals including planning appeals and inquiries, enforcements, injunctions and development plan examinations.

Regulatory and discipline: The teams work encompasses all aspects of criminal prosecutions, professional disciplinary proceedings and regulation in the fields of financial services, education, healthcare, environment, fraud, animal welfare, heath and safety, licensing, inquests and professional discipline. They deal with professional conduct proceedings and undertake internal investigation processes for employer clients dealing with such issues as disciplinary, grievance, whistleblowing and health and safety.

Sport: Guildhall’s sports barristers provide expertise and experience across the sports sector, throughout the United Kingdom and abroad. Their unique knowledge, experience and proven expertise gives all our clients a genuinely competitive edge in the prompt, cost effective resolution of sports-related disputes. We represent a wide range of clients from renowned sportsmen, professional clubs and national sporting bodies, to individual amateur athletes. We are highly experienced in disciplinary and regulatory hearings; sports-related contract, professional negligence, insolvency; commercial, competition, criminal and employment law matters. The winning mentality of our barristers is recognised across a broad spectrum of sporting disciplines including rugby, football, horse racing, motor-racing, athletics, fencing, snooker and swimming.

Technology and construction: The teams construction work includes advice and representation in relation to payment claims, whether as a debt action or arising in adjudications and the enforcement of adjudication decisions by the High Court. We also act in relation to claims in relation to defective work, delay and disruption and loss and expense claims. We also handle disputes arising in projects which have used standard form contracts, such as those published by the Joint Contracts Tribunal (‘JCT’) and the Institution of Civil Engineers (such as the ICE / ICC and NEC3 forms).