Sir Ivan Lawrence, Q.C.

Legal Career

Member of these Practice Teams | CRIME | download CV as PDF

Sir Ivan has been at the Criminal Bar for over 40 years – 23 of them as Queen’s Counsel. He has won a considerable reputation, mainly as a defender, in some of the UK’s most notorious cases. He has appeared in more than 70 murder trials, and has wide experience in drug trafficking, smuggling, rape, child abuse and large-scale commercial frauds. His practice has taken him to the Divisional Court, Court of Appeal, the House of Lords and, in a mass murder war crimes trial, to The Hague.

As a Member of Parliament for 23 years, Sir Ivan was heavily involved in improvements to criminal justice, continued his practice in the criminal courts, and also sat regularly as a Recorder (and Assistant Recorder) in London for 19 years.

His most prominent cases have included:

• R v Ronald Kray (blackmail trial and three murder trials concerning Cornell, Jack the Hat and Mad Axe-Man Mitchell)

• R v McVicar (bank robbery)

• R v Deanus (the Mountnessing silver bullion robbery)

• R v Hickson (the Shoreditch Great Banknote raid)

• R v Martin (attempted police murder)

• R v Nilsen (the serial killer)

• R v Bishop (Brighton Babes in the Wood murders)

• R v Riley (Leonie Darnley child murder)

• R v Patch (receiving Brinks-Mat gold bullion)

• R v Preston (House of Lords: telephone-tapping case)

• R v Emmett (House of Lords: drug trafficking compensation)

• R v Velasquez (asylum-seeker murder)

• R v Hoskins (large-scale Liverpool drug importation)

• R v Gowe (Yardie machete attempted murder)

• R v Kayretli (body in concrete slab murder)

• R v Rahman (wife murder in a Chinese takeaway)

• Prosecutor v Kolundzija (Bosnian mass murder war crimes trial at The Hague)

• R v South (multiple child rape and indecency)

• R v Moules (Leeds paedophile rapes)

• R v Quentin Hann (international snooker-star rape at Savoy hotel)

• R v Biggs (the Loughborough bin-bag child murder)

• Ajaelu v Home Secretary (false imprisonment of British citizen believed to be an illegal immigrant) Turcan v Toplum Postasi (defamation)

Fraud

• R v Clarke (Brinks-Mat gold bullion money-laundering)

• R v Moser (mortgage fraud)

• R v Knight (pyramid selling and off-shore investment fraud)

• R v Bishop (business tax fraud)

• R v Holmes (VAT gold fraud)

• R v Reynolds (Diversion fraud from London City Bond)

Extradition

• US Government v Newton (1989) (At Bow Street: for solicitor charged with assisting Howard Marks)

• Government of Canada v Davies (1997) (Divisional Court: on issue of fitness to be tried).

Sir Ivan’s wider legal experience has been as:

• MP for Burton 1974-1997 

• Member of Employment and Social Services Select Committee 1974-1979

• Member of Foreign Affairs Select Committee 1983-1992 (assisting Amnesty International)

• Member of Consolidation of Statutes Committee 1974-1987

• Member of Executive Council of Justice 1989-1995

• Member of Executive 1922 Committee of Conservative backbench MPs 1987-1997 

• Chairman of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (UK Branch) 1992-1997

• Chairman of the Parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee 1992-1997

• Chairman of All Party of Barristers Group 1987-1997

• Chairman of Conservative Backbench Legal and Home Affairs Committees 1987-1997

• Chairman of Criminal Justice Committee of Society of Conservative Lawyers (in which capacity he gave evidence to the Runciman and Auld Royal Commissions on the Criminal Justice system)

• Fellow of the Society of Advanced Legal Studies (and Chairman of a working group of the Society reviewing anti-terrorist legislation) 2002

• Visiting Professor of Law at University of Buckingham 2003

• Honorary member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America 1980

• As member and chairman of these various Committees, he was an unofficial legal advisor to a series of Home Secretaries, from William Whitelaw to Michael Howard, and to Lord Chancellors Hailsham, Havers and Mackay.

Sir Ivan’s successful campaigns relevant to the law have included:

• Introduction of tape recorded interviews with suspects

• Creation of the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the National Crime Squad and the Criminal Cases Review Commission

• Introduction of the concept of Racially Aggravated Offences

• Abolition of the “year and a day rule” for murder

• Council house and mortgage protection for deserted wives

• Private management of adult prisons

• Extending protection to battered wives

• Improving the treatment of juvenile offenders

Sir Ivan is a member of the Criminal Bar Association and of the South Eastern Circuit, a Bar Council approved human rights trainer and Inner Temple approved advocacy trainer.

He is also a broadcaster, lecturer and contributor to national newspapers and magazines on current legal topics, and he initiated the National Lottery with his private member’s Bill in Parliament.

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