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14 January 2026
Issue: 8145 / Categories: Legal News , Profession , Criminal , Legal aid focus , Arbitration , Equality
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Brimelow sets out Bar priorities for 2026

Bar campaigns will focus on protecting juries, legal aid and children’s rights in the year ahead with a working group already looking into the age of criminal responsibility, chair Kirsty Brimelow KC has said

Giving her inaugural address as chair at Gray’s Inn this week, Brimelow said the current age of ten years is the lowest in Europe, while many children in custody are care-experienced, and neurodiversity and learning disabilities are ‘significantly over-represented’.

Brimelow will challenge government proposals to reduce jury trials, fight for legal aid increases, promote commercial and arbitration work at home and abroad, and campaign for more data collection on cases involving abuse and murder due to witchcraft beliefs. She proposes the Sentencing Council consider including witchcraft belief as an aggravating factor when sentencing.

Another major campaign is fairer allocation of briefs among barristers by solicitors and earnings inequality at the Bar. Brimelow said: ‘Junior barristers and women often don’t bill to reflect the work that they have done, feeling pressured or lacking confidence.’

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Harneys—Maggie Kwok & George Weston

Harneys—Maggie Kwok & George Weston

Harneys senior leadership appointments

Freeths—Keith Browne & Jim Jordan

Freeths—Keith Browne & Jim Jordan

Freeths strengthens London Construction and Engineering practice with two strategic senior hires

Anthony Collins—Laura Moss

Anthony Collins—Laura Moss

Anthony Collins announces strategic hire to deepen skills base in the social business sector

NEWS
Existing defamation law can respond to AI ‘hallucinations’, but allocating responsibility will prove harder where outputs reach users without human intervention
The High Court has upheld a rare successful serious-irregularity challenge after an arbitrator relied on an implied term neither party had advanced
Thirty years after The Future of Law shook a profession still using fax machines, its central forecast looks increasingly less like prophecy and more like description
More than 100 teams from the legal and financial services sectors competed in five sports at the 51st Law Society RFC Festival of Sport earlier this month
Part-time status need only be an effective cause of less favourable treatment, rather than the sole cause, the Supreme Court has held in Augustine v Data Cars
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