Paula Kelly

Paula joined Chambers in October 2024 following successful completion of her pupillage, during which she was supervised by Shahram Sharghy and Rachel Marcus, David Mankell KC, Leanne Woods and Justin Levinson.

She is building experience in all areas of Chambers’ expertise and has appeared in the County Court, the Magistrates’ Court and as sole counsel in the High Court.

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 on a variety of matters, including clinical negligence, actions against the police, media and data law, and currency exchange fraud. 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 and set down guidance on the assessment of damages for such conduct.
• WFZ v BBC [2023] EWHC 1618 – 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 , Article 6 and potential contempt of court.

She was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard Law School between 2021 and 2022. Alongside her academic studies, she volunteered as a student attorney and represented defendants accused of criminal misdemeanors and an individual serving a sentence for second-degree murder in his parole proceedings.

Before being called to the Bar, Paula spent several years as a Parliamentary Adviser, including to the Official Opposition’s shadow ministerial team for Exiting the European Union.