Rupert took silk in 2014, having won 'Chancery Junior of the Year' at the Chambers Bar Awards in 2013. In the same year, he was included in the Chambers 100: UK Bar list of the top 100 junior barristers across all fields. Since 2014, he has been consistently identified as a leader of the Bar across various fields in Chambers Global, Chambers UK Bar, Legal 500 and other directories.
He has a broad commercial and financial dispute practice, with a focus on agreements arising out of property investment, finance, development, and management, as well as wider fraud, banking, and shareholder disputes. In his UK practice, he has recently led trial teams in one of the Lawyer’s ‘Top 20’ cases in each of 2022 (Aurium) and 2023 (Asturion).
His practice in England is primarily in the Commercial Court and Chancery Division of the High Court and the Court of Appeal. He has a substantial overseas practice before arbitral tribunals and in the courts of offshore jurisdictions, in particular, the Dubai International Finance Centre (DIFC) Courts. His international work commonly involves issues as to interim injunctive relief, jurisdiction, applicable law and cross-border enforcement.
Rupert has an established reputation in cases in the Middle East and in London involving parties from the Gulf and wider MENA region. He is fluent in French and has a working knowledge of Arabic, and has significant experience of issues of law and practice arising in Saudi Arabia, as well as the UAE, Egypt and other civil law jurisdictions.
He co-edits the DIFC Courts Practice, the leading text-book on DIFC substantive and procedural law, to which a number of members of Chambers have contributed. In his foreword, the Chief Justice of the DIFC Courts generously commented of the editors that ‘few have made as great a contribution to the development of the laws and rules’.
He is regularly appointed as an arbitrator in commercial, banking and property matters in the Middle East and has significant experience as co-arbitrator, chairperson and sole arbitrator in DIAC and DIFC-LCIA arbitrations. He has even wider experience as counsel in LCIA, LICA-DIFC, ICC, DIAC and LMAA arbitrations seated in Europe and the Gulf.
He is a member of both the DIAC Rules Task Force and the DIFC Court’s Arbitration Working Group, and was appointed in 2023 as a member of the DIAC Court.
Rupert accepts professional negligence and indemnity work for both claimants and defendants across a broad range of professionals, including solicitors, barristers, IFAs, company directors and property professionals.
Rupert's work and reputation have been widely recognized: in Chancery Commercial practice and Middle East Commercial practice in Chambers Global; in Chancery Commercial, Real Estate Litigation, and Professional Negligence in Chambers UK Bar; in Commercial Litigation in London and the Middle East, Property Litigation and Banking and Finance in the Legal 500; and in Civil Fraud and Real Estate in Who's Who Legal: UK Bar. In 2022, he was recognized as one of the world’s leading property practitioners in WWL’s Real Estate Report 2022.
Called 1996: Lincoln’s Inn; KC 2014; Called (ad hoc) to the Bar of the Cayman Islands 1999; Attorney General’s C Panel of Treasury Counsel 2002-2005; registered as an advocate of the DIFC Courts 2009; editor of the leading guide to the Rules of the DIFC Court, published in its most recent edition in 2016.
French (fluent); Arabic (working knowledge)
COMBAR; Chancery Bar Association
Lincoln College, Oxford (BA Hons History and French, 1st Class with Distinction); Downing College, Cambridge (MA Hons Law, Double 1st Class); Harvard Law School (LLM, Kennedy Scholar).