Zara has a busy commercial chancery practice, with a focus on company, insolvency, commercial litigation and arbitration, civil fraud, and banking and finance. She also practises in the DIFC Courts, where she recently acted as sole counsel for the successful Sixth-Eighth Defendants in a ten-day trial before Justice Lord Angus Glennie. Notable instructions include: acting as sole counsel for the administrators of the Oasis and Warehouse retail chain (2022-2023); Autonomy v Lynch (2022); Re Compound Photonics (2021-2022); acting as sole counsel for the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority in respect of energy company insolvencies (2021). Zara was appointed to the Attorney General’s ‘C’ Panel in September 2023.

Before coming to the Bar, Zara read Classics and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, with a year abroad in France. After her degree, she spent time living and working in Kazakhstan and Hong Kong. She has maintained her interest in both jurisdictions: she has rights of audience in the AIFC Court in Kazakhstan, and was awarded the 2018 Inner Temple Pegasus Scholarship to Hong Kong. She was called to the Bar by Middle Temple, which awarded her a Diplock Scholarship for the GDL, and a Queen Mother Scholarship (then the Inn’s most prestigious award) for the BPTC.

French, Russian

Called to the Bar of the Dubai International Financial Centre and the Astana International Financial Centre;

COMBAR; Chancery Bar Association; British Kazakh Lawyers’ Association

MA (Hons) Classics and Modern Languages, Trinity College, University of Oxford GDL, City University BPTC, City University