Barrister Profile

Main Areas of Practice

Administrative Law or Judicial Review
Commercial Law
Human Rights
Public Inquiries

Biography

Emily trained and commenced practice in England in 2008 but returned to NI and the Bar Library. She has a broad commercial and administrative law practice, ranging from high value commercial claims to public interest judicial reviews. She has consistently been ranked as a Leading Junior in multiple categories in the independent legal directories and regularly appears in high value litigation (being instructed in 3 of The Lawyer’s Top 20 cases 2017-18).

Emily’s EU and cross-jurisdictional expertise (actively practising in England, NI and Dublin) is of particular value in the context of Brexit and in utilities and procurement.

She is ranked as Legal 500 Leading Junior in Procurement, EU and Competition Law, as Chambers UK Leading Junior in Telecommunications and Competition Law and as Leading Junior in Competition Law by Chambers Global.

Independent directory descriptions include: “Smart, commercial and a pleasure to work with” (2016); “One to watch” (2017); “Fantastically bright” (2018); “Really client-friendly, very astute, very commercial, very responsive” (2020); “Extremely intelligent and across all of the factual and legal detail of the case” (2020).

Experience

Notable recent cases in which Emily has appeared include:

• Acting for one of the three Core Participants (Ofgem) in the RHI Inquiry (2016-2020)
• Acting for the System Operator of Northern Ireland in the Court of Appeal challenge to the ability of a Department to take a decision absent an Executive - Buick as Chairperson of NoARC 21 [2018] NICA 26
• Acting to successfully resist a high value challenge to the approach to accreditation of wind farms under the NI RO Scheme - Pigeon Top Windfarm Limited v OFGEM [2017] NIQB 119
• Acting for Royal Mail defending a high value breach of contract, tort and restitution claim worth £0.5 billion - The Royal Mail Group Litigation [2020] EWHC 97 Ch
• Acting for Vodafone as lead claimant in a restitution claim, at first instance and in the Court of Appeal, obtaining judgment of £214 million - Vodafone v Ofcom [2020] EWCA Civ 183

Further information about experience in each of Emily’s various practice areas (in NI, England and ROI) is available here:

Publications

• Bacon, EU State Aid Law (3rd edition): Chapter on Media and Communications.
• Goulding, Employee Competition (3rd edition): Chapter on Competition Law.
• Sport: Law and Practice (Lewis and Taylor) (3rd Edition): Chapter on Sport and Discrimination.
• Tolley’s Discrimination Law Handbook (Sections on: Jurisdiction and Limitation Period, Contract Workers, Job Applicants, Partnerships, Trade Associations, and Individual Liability.)
• CRD3 Remuneration rules and existing agreements: an English perspective (with Simon Pritchard). Butterworths Journal of International Banking & Financial Law (Vol 26 No3)