Richard Oakley

Richard has a wealth of experience in advising and handling a full range of admiralty matters including casualty investigation, collisions, pollution, grounding and total loss cases.

Richard started his legal career with another leading shipping firm in London in 2008 and was soon relocated to Shanghai where he undertook many casualty investigations ‘at the sharp end’ in China and the East Asia region. He moved back to London 2012 to obtain further in-depth experience of the full range of disputes arising out of marine casualties, and then he returned to the Asia Pacific region, based in Hong Kong, in 2015.

Prior to embarking on his legal career, Richard spent five years at a leading international P&I Club where he handled the full range of P&I and FD&D matters.

Prior to that, Richard served for nine years in the Merchant Navy as a deck officer where he worked on a wide variety of vessel types including container ships, bulk ships, Ro Ros, ferries, passenger ships and high speed catamarans, and obtained his master mariner’s qualification.

Richard’s practice is split evenly between ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ contentious shipping work. His in-depth firsthand knowledge of ship operations, both from a navigational and cargo and ship operations aspect, enables him to efficiently advise on highly technical shipping cases. Richard also has in-depth knowledge and experience of carrying out remote casualty investigations by analysing electronic data from voyage data recorders, third party AIS data and remote interviewing procedures. His advice is always practical and concise allowing his clients to get the right result in a cost effective and timely manner.

Richard is a solicitor of England and Wales and Hong Kong and regularly represents shipping clients in those courts as well as in arbitrations.