Staff profile

Kevin is a barrister specialising in family law, practising from Trinity Chambers, Newcastle upon Tyne and a Senior Law Lecturer and Programme Leader of the Bar Professional Training Programme at Northumbria University’s School of Law. In 1998, having successfully completed the Bar Vocational Course at Northumbria University, Kevin was called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn. He undertook pupillage with the leading family law set One Garden Court, Temple, London and now has over seventeen years’ experience as a specialist practitioner in family law.

As a barrister, Kevin deals with a wide range of cases from high value ancillary relief to complex public law Children Act cases. He appears before all levels of tribunal from the Family Court to the Family Division of the High Court and Court of Appeal. Included in reported cases, Kevin was Counsel in Re C (Residence Order) [2007] EWCA Civ 886 [2008] 1 FLR 211; Transfer of Residence; Implacable Hostility; mother refusing contact to father resulting in transfer of residence to father. Kevin Also accepts instructions in cohabitation disputes in applications under the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996. 

As an academic, in his role as a Senior Law Lecturer, Kevin is the module tutor for family law on the BPTC at Northumbria University. He has also taught civil litigation and evidence, opinion writing, conference skills, drafting, advocacy and professional ethics. He has written and delivered papers on a variety of areas of academic interest including the role of mediation in family law, interdisciplinary advocacy teaching, and pro bono engagement at the Bar. Kevin is also the module tutor for conference skills on the BPTC.

In 1990 Kevin graduated from Swansea University with an Upper Second Class BSc (Econ) in Development Studies and in 1993 he gained his MA from Durham University alongside the Diploma in Social Work. Prior to being called to the Bar, Kevin worked for six years as a probation and family court welfare officer which included writing court reports on private law Children Act cases. Kevin is also a qualified family law mediator, is accredited by the Advocacy Training Council and a member of the North Eastern Circuit and Family Law Bar Association.

Kevin is a PhD candidate at Durham, supervised by Dr Andy Hayward.

Current Research

Kevin’s current research, drawing both on experience in practice and through an evaluation and appraisal of the literature, examines the role of alternative dispute resolution in family law and in particular within the context of finances on relationship breakdown. More specifically, the research questions the assumption that it is always better to mediate than to litigate and seeks to unpick, examine and evaluate the processes of mediation, the role, training and selection of mediators, measures of outcomes, definitions of success, costs, the impact on parties engaged in a mediated process and more broadly on the family justice system.