Bristol's first ever student law conference [Fri 8 March]

Further information

About the speakers

Lord Hunt

David Hunt was the MP for Wirral from 1976 to 1997 and a member of the Government from 1979 to 1995, serving in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Wales, Secretary of State for Employment and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, when he stepped down to become Senior Partner of the international commercial law firm, DAC Beachcroft, where he has now been a partner since 1969. He became Chair of the Press Complaints Commission in October 2011 and is also Non-Executive Chairman of the Lending Standards Board.

The Right Honourable the Baroness Hale of Richmond

The Right Honourable the Baroness Hale of Richmond was officially installed as the University’s seventh Chancellor on 12 March 2004, succeeding Sir Jeremy Morse who retired at the end of 2003. Lady Hale became one of the UK’s 12 Law Lords in January 2004 – the only woman ever to hold such a position. She studied Law at Cambridge and received a starred First for exceptional distinction in that subject. In 1966 she became an academic at the University of Manchester, eventually specialising in social welfare and family law. She also studied at the Bar, topping the list in the Bar finals in 1968 and then practising part time as a barrister. In 1984, Brenda Hale became the youngest person and the first woman ever to be appointed to the Law Commission. Over the course of a decade she instigated a number of key reforms. She led the work that produced the Children Act 1989 – a radical re-casting of the relationship between parents, children and the State – and the important domestic violence legislation that formed part of the Family Law Act 1996. She was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1989, a High Court judge in 1994 (the first to be appointed from academia) and a Lady Justice of Appeal in 1999 – only the second woman to reach that position.

Nick Gargan

Nick Gargan is the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset Constabulary. He is the Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for the Information Systems Improvement Strategy as well as for the IMPACT Programme – delivering the Police National Database to policing in response to Lord Bichard’s recommendation. Nick’s police career began in Leicestershire Constabulary in 1988. He served in a variety of uniform and detective roles in and around Leicester before commencing a three-year secondment to the National Criminal Intelligence Service in 1995. During his secondment he was based both in London and Paris. In Paris, he worked extensively in support of the investigation into the death of the Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed – subsequently giving evidence at the inquest. On his return to Leicestershire in 1998, Nick performed a variety of roles including Detective Superintendent, Head of Crime Squads and Basic Command Unit Commander for Leicestershire East area. He transferred to Thames Valley Police at the beginning of 2006. He was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal in the 2012 New Year’s Honours list.

Gillian Phillips

Gill is a media law specialist. She currently works in-house as the Director of Editorial Legal Services for Guardian News & Media Limited (publishers of the Guardian and Observer newspapers and guardian.co.uk). She advises on a range of content-related matters including defamation, privacy, contempt of court and reporting restrictions. She read History (Part I) and Law (Part II) at Selwyn College Cambridge. She trained at Coward (now Clifford) Chance and spent three years PQE in the litigation department there specialising in commercial / civil litigation. In 1987, she escaped from private practice, joining the BBC as an in-house lawyer dealing with pre and post publication and litigation matters. Between 1996/7 she was an in-house lawyer at News Group Newspapers (The Sun & The News of the World) before moving, in 1997, to the College of Law, where she lectured in Civil and Criminal Litigation and Employment. In 2000, she joined Times Newspapers Limited (publishers of The Times and The Sunday Times) as an in-house lawyer, becoming Head of Litigation. In May 2009, she moved to Guardian News & Media Limited. She was a member of the Ministry of Justice’s Working Group on Libel Reform. She was involved in the Trafigura super injunction case and was a member of the Master of the Rolls Injunction Committee. She has recently been involved in advising the Guardian on phone-hacking, Wikileaks and the Leveson Inquiry. She also sits as a part-time Employment Tribunal Judge and co-authors the College of Law Employment Law handbook.

Professor Lorna Woods

Professor Woods is co-director of the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism at City University London and a professor in The City Law School. Formerly a practising solicitor in an ICT practice, she has extensive experience in the field of media policy, communications regulation and freedom of expression and privacy, and she has published widely in this area (recently editing a collection on Freedom of Expression and the Media, Martinus Nijhoff, 2012). She is a recognised expert in the field having participated in a range of studies, such as UK country expert in Hans Bredow Study on Co-regulation in the Media; rapporteur at the UNESCO regional conference forming part of the contribution to the implementation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) on the ethical dimension of the information society and participant at the WSIS+10 Review Event; participation in the FRA event at the OSCE meeting ‘Freedom of Expression on the Internet – Possibilities and Challenges’ (2009); and has given evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications with regards to plurality of provision of content and media ownership. She is currently researching the impact of Article 10 ECHR positive obligations on media and communications regulation.