Members’ biographies
Sir Geoffrey Vos
Master of the Rolls and Chair of the Civil Justice Council
Sir Geoffrey Vos was appointed Master of the Rolls and Head of Civil Justice in England and Wales on 11 January 2021. In addition to being President of the Court of Appeal’s Civil Division, the Master of the Rolls is chair of both the Civil Justice Council and the Civil Procedure Rule Committee. He is chair of the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives and of the Forum on Historical Manuscripts and Academic Research. He is a member of the LawtechUK Panel and chair of its UK Jurisdiction Taskforce. Sir Geoffrey was elected as second Vice-President of the Council the European Law Institute with effect from September 2023, and is a member of the Steering Group of the Standing International Forum of Commercial Courts.
Sir Colin Birss
Deputy Head of Civil Justice
Colin Birss is a judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and Deputy Head of Civil Justice. He was called to the English Bar in 1990 and practised in intellectual property law. He was appointed Standing Counsel for the Comptroller 2003-2008 and took silk in 2008. In 2010 Colin Birss was appointed judge of the Patents County Court (now Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC)). In 2013 he was appointed to the High Court, Chancery Division. He served as Supervising Judge for the Business and Property Courts on the Midlands, Western and Wales Circuits from 2017-2019 and then in 2019 became Judge in Charge of the Patents Court. In 2021 he was appointed to the Court of Appeal and as Deputy Head of Civil Justice. Colin Birss was a member of the Civil Procedure Rules Committee for many years and now chairs that committee. He is an independent judicial member of the EPO Boards of Appeal Committee, and a Council member of the UK Foundation for Science and Technology.
Diane Astin
Housing Member
Diane is currently a member of the CJC Access to Justice Standing Committee and is contributing to the current work on pre-action protocols.
Diane has assisted the CJC on the LASPO Post Implementation Review Part one (Civil Legal Aid Reforms). She has taken the lead in responding to numerous consultations on behalf of the CJC.
Diane teaches at Brunel University London as a Lecturer in Legal Practice. She has previously taught law at the Universities of Westminster and North London.
Diane works for Deighton Pierce Glynn. Previously she has worked at the Public Law Project, Islington Law Centre and Shelter as well as several legal aid firms. She specialises in housing, public law and community care and is the author of the LAG book “Housing Law Handbook”.
Dr Natalie Byrom
Information Architecture and Econometrics Member
Dr Natalie Byrom is a researcher and policy adviser with expertise in justice system reform, data-driven technologies, evidence based policy-making and data governance. She is currently Honorary Senior Research Fellow at UCL Laws, where her research focuses on exploring the implications of data driven technologies for access to justice and investigating new models for enhancing the role of the public in justice data governance.
Between 2015 and 2023 Dr Byrom was Director of Research at The Legal Education Foundation, an independent charitable trust during this time she founded and led the Justice Lab initiative.
Between 2018 and 2020 Dr Byrom was seconded to the Ministry of Justice, part of the UK government as Expert Advisor on Open Data and Academic Engagement. The recommendations arising from her secondment have been accepted by government and are currently being implemented as part of the data strategy underpinning the ongoing digital court reform programme. Her recommendations led to the creation of the Shadow Senior Data Governance Panel, on which she now sits, and the decision to create the state funded and administered judgement repository and publication service at The National Archives.
Dr Byrom sits on the Civil Justice Council’s Futures Group, a body established to advise England and Wales most senior civil judge, the Master of the Rolls, on the impact of technology on the administration of and access to justice. In 2021 she was appointed by the President of the Family Division as data expert to the Family Transparency Implementation Group, a group tasked with improving the transparency of the family courts in England and Wales.
Dr Byrom has given evidence to a number of parliamentary committees including the Justice Select Committee (open justice and constitutional implications of Covid-19) and the House of Lords Constitution Committee on issues relating to data collection, sharing and governance. Her writing on these issues has been published in the legal and national press. She is part of the BBC Expert Women Network and currently sits on the Administrative Justice Council for England and Wales, where she is a member of the steering group. In August 2022 she was appointed to the Civil Justice Council as member for information architecture and econometrics.”
Nicola Critchley
Insurance Member
Nicola recently chaired a working group looking on Low Value Personal Injury Claims which published its final report in December 2020. In 2017, she chaired a working group which looked at Holiday Sickness Claims. She is the official CJC observer at the Civil Procedure Rule Committee and reports to the CJC on relevant CPRC work.
Nicola is a Partner at DWF in Manchester. She has extensive experience of dealing with high value costs litigation, costs budgeting, appeals, fraud, technical challenges, portal dropouts, infant approvals, FRCS issues and bulk test litigation on behalf of insurers, self-insureds, and organisations. Nicola is a member of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers.
John Cuss
Solicitor Member
John is a solicitor and works for Hudgell Solicitors as Legal Services Director, responsible for the strategic and technical delivery of legal services across the firm. Supporting the next generation of aspiring lawyers is very important to John, and he also leads on the firm’s early careers and work experience programmes and was very pleased to be recognised as PIBA Mentor of the Year at the Hull and East Yorkshire People in Business Awards 2023. John is also Vice-Chair of the National Law Society Dispute Resolution Committee and a Senior Advisor to the Association of Consumer Support Organisations (ACSO).
Elisabeth Davies
Consumer Affairs Member
Elisabeth is a member of the CJC Access to Justice Standing Committee and the Judicial/ADR Liaison Committee. She was an advisor to the working group on Guideline Hourly Rates.
Elisabeth has worked across charitable and public sectors with a particular focus on dispute resolution and consumer protection. She is currently the Chair of the Office for Legal Complaints which oversees the Legal Ombudsman scheme and is also Chair of the Assurance and Appointments Committee of the General Pharmaceutical Council. She is the former Senior Independent Director and Chair of the Quality Committee of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and the former Chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel.
Elisabeth is currently Chair of the Prisoners’ Education Trust and was previously a Trustee of Support Through Court supporting people going through the court process without legal representation.
Andrew Higgins
Legal Academic Member
Andrew is the chair of the working group conducting a review of Pre-action Protocols. He is a member of the Judicial/ADR Liaison Committee and the CJC Access to Justice Standing Committee.
He is an Associate Professor of Civil Procedure at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Mansfield College. He is currently the General Editor of Civil Justice Quarterly. Andrew previously worked as a solicitor for the Australian law firm Slater & Gordon and was admitted to the Victorian Bar in 2011. He has a DPhil from the University of Oxford and completed the BCL in 2005.
Andrew has published civil procedure related subjects including a book on legal professional privilege.
Daniel Hoadley
Digital Technology and Information Member
Daniel Hoadley is Head of Data Science and Analytics at London law firm Mishcon de Reya LLP, specialising in the application of artificial intelligence and data science to legal information and processes. Daniel was called to the Bar in 2009 and worked as a law reporter for The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales (ICLR). Between 2015 and 2020, Daniel played a leading role in the modernisation of ICLR, co-designing the ICLR Online-series of legal research platforms, devising a substantial expansion in the coverage of The Weekly Law Reports, and building the first open-source deep learning model for processing English legal information, Blackstone.
Steven Jarman
Deputy Director Civil Justice and Law Policy, Ministry of Justice
Steven Jarman joined the Civil Service in 2008 and has spent the majority of his career working in a variety of corporate, operational and policy roles across the Ministry of Justice and Home Office. He is currently the Deputy Director for Civil Justice and Law Policy Division. Immediately prior to this role, Steven spent six years working across the Legal Services Policy Division where he was responsible for devising and delivering the UK’s first LawTech vision and the UK’s first legal services trade and promotion strategy focused on improving market access for UK legal professionals. Prior to this Steven worked in the Home Office’s Litigation Operations Group with responsibility for all of the Home Office’s unlawful detention and immigration removals litigation.
Amrik Kandola
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Member
Amrik Kandola is a full-time commercial Mediator. After joining Eversheds LLP (now Eversheds Sutherland LLP) in 1991 as a trainee, Amrik became a partner in 2002.He specialised in technology, engineering, construction, and energy infrastructure disputes. He was an elected Board member of the firm between 2011 and 2014. In 2016 Amrik left private practice to become a full-time commercial mediator. He now mediates complex, high value and multi-party disputes across a wide range of commercial sectors.
Amrik is a CEDR Panel Mediator and Lead Faculty trainer on the CEDR Mediator Skills Training course. He was named Civil/Commercial Mediator of the Year 2023 at the National Mediation Awards (NMA) in 2022.
Kate Pasfield
Legal Aid Member
Kate is a solicitor who joined Legal Aid Practitioners Group at the start of 2019. Before moving to LAPG, Kate worked for many years as a legal aid solicitor specialising in housing law. She qualified into the housing department at South West London Law Centres in 2007, became the Senior Solicitor at the Tooting branch in 2010, and then the Head of Legal Practice in 2012.
She then moved to head up the housing and community care departments at Swain & Co Solicitors in Southampton in 2014. She is a passionate advocate for access to justice, having spent many years acting for vulnerable tenants faced with possession proceedings, homelessness, and poor living conditions. She now uses that knowledge and experience at LAPG in her role as Director of Legal Aid Policy. She joined the Civil Justice Council in 2022 as the legal aid member and sits on the CJC Executive Committee.
Mr Justice Simon Picken
High Court Member
Simon Picken was appointed a High Court Judge in June 2015, becoming one of the Judges of the Commercial Court the following year.
In addition to sitting in the Commercial Court, Mr Justice Picken is authorised to sit in the Financial List and the Administrative Court, as well as in other King’s Bench Division work, including crime.
Mr Justice Picken was educated at his local state secondary school, Cardiff High School, before reading Law at Cardiff University and then Cambridge where he obtained a Starred First Class in the LLM. He was called to the Bar in 1989 and from 1991 practised at 7 King’s Bench Walk in commercial law.
He was appointed a QC (now KC) in 2006 and was made a Recorder in 2005, becoming a Deputy High Court Judge in 2010.He was the Commercial Law QC to the Welsh Government from 2009 until 2015. He was also the QC Church Commissioner (appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York) between 2013 and 2015.Between January 2018 and December 2021, he was Presiding Judge of Wales. He is the Senior Judiciary’s representative on the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary and the High Court representative in the International Association of Judges.He is co-author of the specialist book, ‘Good Faith and Insurance Contracts’ (4th Ed., 2017) Committee.
Sue Prince
Lay Member
Sue is a Professor in the Law School at the University of Exeter. She has held several senior roles in the University, including Associate Academic Dean for Students and Associate Dean Education for the Faculty of Social Sciences. She was also the Interim Head of the Law School for a long period. She sits on University Council. Sue set up the first law clinic at the University of Exeter, based at Exeter Combined Court, which won the LawWorks Attorney General Award for Best New Student Pro Bono Activity. She also received an award from the Attorney General for a debt literacy project with local schools. She has carried out evaluations of court-connected ADR for the Ministry of Justice across fast-track, multi-track, and small claims mediation, and has researched mandatory mediation in Canada, Florida, and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. She was a member of the CJC Advisory Group on ODR. Sue is an accredited civil and commercial mediator and a community mediator. She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Authority.
Rosemary Rand
Deputy Director Civil – HMCTS
Biography not yet available.
District Judge David Robinson BEM
District Judge Member
David was appointed as a District Judge in 2019, having been appointed earlier that year as a Deputy District Judge and having previously sat as a Legally Qualified Chair of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service since 2017. Prior to appointment David worked as a solicitor.
David is the Senior Contributing Editor to Civil Court Practice (“the Green Book”) as well as editing and authoring other civil legal publications.
In the 2015 New Year’s Honours List, David was was awarded the British Empire Meal for services to the community in Cleveland, North East England.
Laurence Shaw
Legal Executive Member
Laurence is a freelance legal consultant/qualified Chartered Legal Executive. He worked in the BTE/ATE market for a short time for a well-known firm of Legal Expense providers. He has over 40 years’ experience dealing with Personal Injury claims on behalf of the Claimant and, in the latter years, specialised in foreign jurisdiction litigation arising out of accidents abroad. He was an active member of APIL (Association of Personal Injury Lawyers) and PEOPIL (Pan European Organisation of Personal Injury Lawyers). He sat on the council of CILEX (Chartered Institute of Legal Executives) for 15 years, during which time he chaired the Investigating Committee looking into possible members’ misdemeanours, as well as chairing the Law Reform Committee for Contentious business. He is currently a Special Reference Group adviser for CILEX in Civil Litigation and, through that role, he represented CILEX on the Civil Justice Council Costs Committee on Guideline Hourly Rates.
Elizabeth Smart
Advice Sector Member
Liz is a Professor of Legal Education and a practising solicitor. She is currently Head of the School of Law and Society at St Mary’s University, Twickenham and is a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Liz is a non-Executive Solicitor Director of the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA) and serves on the Independent Ethics Panel for the Police and Crime Commissioner in South Yorkshire advising on equality, diversity, and inclusion.
Liz created a unique innovative law provision which was the only law degree in the UK which provided placement opportunities for all students embedded at all levels and removed the barriers to entry in the legal profession realising the ambition that we should reflect the communities we serve.
John Sorabji
Barrister Member
Dr John Sorabji is a barrister at Nine St John Street Chambers and an associate professor within the law faculty at University College London (UCL). He is General Editor of The White Book.
HHJ Karen Walden-Smith
Circuit Judge Member
Karen Walden-Smith is the Designated Civil Judge for East Anglia and sits as a Deputy High Court Judge with tickets for the King’s Bench Division, the Administrative Court including the Planning Court, the Business and Property Court, and the Court of Appeal Criminal Division. She was called to the Bar in 1990 and practised in property/Chancery work at 5 Stone Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn. She was appointed a Recorder in 2004 and a full-time Circuit Judge in 2010, initially sitting in crime and then in civil and Chancery. She was appointed as a Senior Circuit Judge in 2013 in the Chancery list at Central London County Court, and additionally became the Designated Civil Judge for London in 2015. She has been a Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn since 2013 and is particularly involved in the scholarship work of the Inn. Karen is keen to promote an efficient, fair and inclusive civil justice system, and is a Diversity and Community Relations Judge, an LIP Liaison Judge and a Social Ambassador.
James Walker
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) Member
James is a serial entrepreneur with expertise in resolution and consumer rights. He founded and developed Resolver, a complaints website that facilitated the resolution of £4 billion worth of issues for consumers, while also creating case handling platforms for parking appeals, Ombudsmen, and banking disputes. Additionally, he serves as a founding Non-Executive for the Scottish consumer advocacy body, Consumer Scotland, and acts as an Advisor to the CAA and ORR. Furthermore, he holds a position as a Board member of the Dispute Resolution Ombudsman. James has also been instrumental in establishing the Collaboration Network, launching a cashback app called JamDoughnut, and developing a platform to assist consumers in managing their data, known as Rightly.
Emily Wickens
Deputy Director Civil Reform – HMCTS
Rhodri Williams KC
Welsh Member
Rhodri is the Council’s first member representing Wales. He was appointed in 2019 to ensure the Council fulfils its statutory remit of overseeing the civil justice system in England and Wales, particularly given the effects of devolution and the growing divergence of English and Welsh law.
Rhodri is a barrister specialising in EU law, local government law and public and administrative law from Chambers in Cardiff and London. He deals with cases involving both local and regional government, including advising the Welsh Government and other Government Departments and local authorities, in England, Wales and in Northern Ireland.
In 2000, he was appointed to the Attorney General’s list of approved Counsel and to the list of the Counsel General to the National Assembly for Wales and has represented the United Kingdom Government on several occasions before the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg.