12 July 2007
In brief
Vera Baird QC has been appointed solicitor general, the attorney general’s deputy. Called to the Bar in 1975, Baird took silk in 2000 and was a human rights law trainer for the Criminal Bar Association from 1999–2002. In 1999 she was a visiting law fellow at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she undertook research on reforming the law on homicide. She is now an honorary fellow of St Hilda’s and of Teesside University and is also a visiting professor at South Bank University. As a member of Tooks Chambers since 1986, Baird represented Emma Humphreys in her ground-breaking case about the law on battered women who kill their violent partners.
