Laura Briggs KC

Practice Areas

Laura is a highly regarded silk, specialising in private law and public law children work at the bar.

Her practice incorporates trials of allegations including infant death and serious non-accidental injury where scientific and medical evidence is in dispute. She represents parents, children and local authorities in the most complex of cases and benefits from an understanding of the evidence from all these perspectives. In cases where allegations of sexual abuse are in issue, she has experience of historic abuse, inter-sibling abuse and cases in which robust challenge of the investigative process is required.

Laura practices in cases of abduction and alleged abduction to Hague and non-Hague jurisdictions, including jurisdictions where there is risk from warfare. Her international practice includes cases where children are to be placed overseas in public proceedings or where there is an application for permission to remove a child from the jurisdiction in private proceedings. Laura has experience of practice abroad, having lived in the Cayman Islands in 2010-2011. She has also acted in an advisory capacity in other jurisdictions while at the London bar.

In adoption cases, Laura has acted in non-Convention international adoptions and in cases of placement breakdown.

In her private law practice, Laura’s work includes especially complex and high conflict cases. She is instructed where allegations of coercive and controlling behaviour, alienating behaviour and drug and alcohol abuse arise in proceedings. She offers strategic advice at the pre-proceedings stage and is sensitive to the need for clients to be supported in and out of Court. Her experience both the public and private spheres of children law allows her to offer highly effective and pragmatic advice to private clients who are experiencing local authority intervention.

Career

LLB (Hons) Manchester University.

Called to the Bar, Inner Temple 2001.

Called to the Bar (Cayman Islands) 2010.

Door tenant at 18 St John Street Chambers, Manchester.

Appointed a Recorder in the family court in 2015, sitting on the South Eastern Circuit.

Appointed to King’s Counsel, 2022.

Qualified as a Family Law Arbitrator (Children), 2022.

Professional Memberships

FLBA - committee member

Association of Lawyers for Children