Chambers & Partners UK Bar Guide 2025
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“A fantastic team player. He is legally creative and stands his ground in court”
Paul is a leading commercial barrister known for being “top rate on complex contractual disputes” both domestically and internationally. His cases see him working across a wide variety of sectors including technology, insurance, legal, finance and crypto assets.
He has particular expertise in disputes involving the protection of business interests (eg involving restrictive covenants, team moves and misuse of confidential information) as well as employment rights. Much of this work includes allegations of fraud. This expertise ensures he is on the cutting edge of the law in business sectors such as technology where the law often lags behind market development requiring someone who is “extremely bright, commercially astute”.
His cases frequently call on his ability to identify legal and commercial concerns quickly and act swiftly: “Paul has a samurai sword of a mind that cuts immediately to the key issues. A brilliant and incisive intellect.” He is therefore very experienced in making or resisting applications for injunctions, including applications for springboard relief, search and freezing orders. The legal directories note he “is fantastic on injunction work with brilliant advocacy skills and impeccably prepared.”
Whilst a major part of his practice sees him the High Court and other courts and tribunals, Paul also acts as counsel in both arbitrations and mediations.
Clients welcome the fact that he is “a fantastic team player. He is legally creative and stands his ground in court.”
In late 2020, Paul published a book called “Employment and Commercial Disputes – the International Aspects” (Bloomsbury).
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Paul’s experience of employment law, commercial law and civil fraud make him a leading silk for disputes concerning the protection of businesses, in particular from unlawful competition.
This includes action to restrain breaches of post-termination restraints, prevent the disclosure and misuse of confidential information and enjoin unlawful team moves, enforcement of non-compete clauses, garden leave claims, allegations of director and employee fraud as well as bribery, the recovery of misappropriated assets, and interim and final relief.
He is a specialist in urgent interim applications including springboard and freezing injunctions, doorstep delivery up orders as well as applications for injunctions to restrain breaches of contract, such as terms imposing post-termination restraints and preventing disclosure of confidential information, orders for the interrogation of computers in order to identify and delete confidential information, accounts of profits, tracing including international asset recovery, and Wrotham Park damages.
Paul operates both nationally and internationally, handling cross-jurisdictional and conflict of law issues.
Paul is an experienced commercial silk handling a wide variety of claims from breach of contract and unfair prejudice to substantial fraud claims and misuse of confidential information.
As well as the business protection work he undertakes (see separate tab), he has particular expertise in claims involving breach of directors’ duties and employment related issues such as the enforcement of post-termination restraints.
Featured cases
Paul has long experience of practice in the full range of employment law claims, both statutory and common law.
Ranked by both Chambers & Prs and Legal 500 as a top silk, he is seen as “calm, clever, practical and an excellent performer in court”; someone who “H has a brain the size of a planet and is incredibly good at working things out, processing them, and articulating them in a really clear and sophisticated way.”
He has appeared in the EAT and Court of Appeal on numerous occasions in connection with this work, in the widest range of cases such as whistle-blowing, age discrimination, associative disability discrimination and a case concerning members of a tribunal who fell asleep.
His profile as a leading silk in this area ensures that he is involved in cases that raise novel or difficult points of law, such as whether holiday pay had to include pay for voluntary overtime and whether the tribunal had territorial jurisdiction over US-domiciled parties.
Featured cases
Paul’s business protection expertise means he can handle regulatory and public law challenges to protect or further commercial interests.
In addition, he has undertaken much judicial review work for the government and also done numerous cases for the Legal Aid Agency and public law cases for the Bar Standards Board involving challenges to its processes.
Featured cases
Education:
LLB, University of Sheffield, First Class, 1989
BCL, University of Oxford, First Class, Vinerian Scholarship, 1990
“Employment and Commercial Disputes – the International Aspects” (Bloomsbury – 2020).
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