Red Lion Chambers has long been known as a ‘very strong and highly regarded set of criminal law barristers’. Gillian Jones KC recently defended Marius Draghici, charged with 39 counts of manslaughter and conspiring to facilitate a breach of immigration law after a group of Vietnamese migrants died in the back of a lorry trailer on the way to the UK - the case involving novel legal arguments concerning the potential abuse of court process relating to Draghici’s extradition from Romania, as well as the disclosure of case papers to the defendant's Romanian lawyers. Jones KC and Genevieve Reed also represented a man acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter in a five-defendant trial concerning a robbery of a competitor by a group of drug dealers - a co-defendant was convicted of murder. Hugh French , ‘a robust and effective prosecutor’, has a varied practice that encompasses homicide, child sexual abuse, and large-scale drug conspiracy cases. In January 2024 he was lead junior for the Crown in a trial, in which a married couple received matching sentences of 33 years imprisonment for exporting six tonnes of cocaine to Australia.
Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.
