Ian Rogers

Ian Rogers QC is a leading silk who has built up an impressive body of work spanning a broad range of practice areas. He has represented private and public parties on 14 occasions in the Supreme Court and Privy Council. He has appeared numerous times in the EU Court of Justice (“CJEU”) and EFTA Court and was the final advocate to appear for the UK in the CJEU before the Brexit implementation period ended in December 2020. Much of his work is of a commercial character, ranging from his particular specialism in “commercial human rights” cases to the full range of general commercial litigation.

There are few areas of law to which he has not turned his hand during the course of a career spanning over 25 years, earning his “reputation as a seasoned advocate in both European and domestic courts”. As a result, one of Ian’s strengths is his capacity to bring a new perspective in cutting edge cases operating at the intersections of areas of law, and also in developing areas of law. He is therefore particularly well-equipped to assist companies, public bodies and individuals with the challenges they face in the post-Brexit legal landscape of “EU Relations Law” and UK international trade law generally.

Given the breadth of his body of domestic and international work at every level of court and tribunal, Ian has wide-ranging experience across a huge number of industry sectors, including: pharmaceuticals, health and social care, tobacco and alcohol, rail, road and passenger ferry transport, road user charging, telecommunications and broadcasting, food safety, agriculture and animal welfare, climate change and environmental protection, banking and financial services, labelling and packaging, intellectual property, media, sports, public health, education, insurance, professional discipline and regulation, advertising, retail and e-commerce, cross-border controls, international trade, corporate service providers, employment agencies/businesses and outsourcing.

He has extensive offshore experience through multiple cases in the Isle of Man (where he has appeared as an advocate in doleance proceedings and in the Staff of Government Division), the Channel Islands and Caribbean jurisdictions.

His client list is as broad as his experience. In public law, this includes the UK Prime Minister, the First Minister for Wales, the Italian Prime Minister, the Isle of Man Government, the UK (in overseas proceedings), the Advocate General for Scotland, tribunals, the staff of the European Investment Bank and some 800 judges. In commercial and private client work, some of the world’s largest oil and pharmaceutical companies, law firms, Premiership football and rugby clubs and the private owners of some of Europe’s largest steel and supermarket groups rank among Ian’s clients. At the other end of the spectrum, Ian acted pro bono in the Privy Council for a person on death row, whose conviction was quashed when vital new evidence proved he had been wrongly identified.

Prior to taking silk, Ian served on the Attorney-General’s A Panel of Treasury Counsel. He is one of eight silks appointed to the Welsh Government’s Panel of QCs, having served on its Public Law A Panel until taking silk. Ian was honoured by Gray’s Inn in 2020 by his election as a Bencher.

First class honours degree in Law from Hertford College, Oxford (1994) Winner of the Oxford University (Martin Wronker) Finals Prize for Tort (1994) Winter Williams award and Hertford Scholarship (1992-93) Prince of Wales Scholarship at Bar School awarded by Gray’s Inn (1995) Pegasus Scholarship from the Inns of Court (1998) SCR Visitor to Trinity College, Melbourne, worked for Mallesons Stephen Jaques commercial litigation department in Melbourne and as Judicial Associate to Mr Justice Lindgren at the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney (1998) Master’s degree from European University Institute, Florence in Comparative, European and International Law (2002)