Welcoming our 2023 pupils Paula Kelly and Rebekah Lee - Oct 2023
Paula joined chambers as a pupil in October 2023 and is building experience in all areas of chambers expertise.
Prior to beginning pupillage, Paula was a Judicial Assistant in the King’s Bench Division assisting High Court judges with legal research and judgment writing. She gained valuable experience in several areas of civil law, ranging from clinical negligence and personal injury to data and privacy and actions against the police. She assisted on several significant cases, including:
- FGX v Gaunt [2023] EWHC 419 (KB): The first civil judgment for image-based sexual abuse in England and Wales in which Mrs Justice Thornton awarded nearly £100,000 for misuse of private information, intentional infliction of harm and breach of confidence and undertook a comprehensive review of authorities to set down guidance on the assessment of damages for such conduct.
- WFZ v BBC [2023] EWHC 419 (KB) – A high-profile individual under criminal investigation for sexual offences who obtained an interim injunction to prevent the BBC identifying him before a charging decision was made, which clarified the scope of Bloomberg v ZXC [2022] UKSC 5 and raised novel questions about the interaction between Article 8 right to privacy, Article 6 right to a fair trial and potential contempt of court.
Between 2021 and 2022, she was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard Law School. Alongside her academic studies, she volunteered as a student attorney, defending low-income criminal defendants accused of misdemeanors in Boston courts and representing an individual serving a sentence for second-degree murder in his parole proceedings.
Before being called to the Bar, Paula spent several years advising MPs on policy and legislation, including the Official Opposition’s Shadow team for Exiting the European Union between 2017 and 2019.
