He becomes the Head of Civil Justice and second most senior judge in England and Wales after the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett.
Sir Geoffrey was Bar Council chair in 2007. He was called to the Bar in 1977, practising commercial and chancery law from 3 Stone Buildings. He took silk in 1993, sat as a deputy high court judge from 1999 and was appointed a High Court judge in the Chancery Division in 2009.
From 2005 he was a judge of the Court of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey and then of the Cayman Islands. In 2013, he was appointed as a Lord Justice of Appeal.
In a speech at the swearing-in ceremony this week, Lord Burnett described Sir Geoffrey as ‘someone possessed of inexhaustible energy’. He edits the White Book, was previously chairman of trustees of the Social Mobility Foundation and helps his wife Vivien farm in Hertfordshire.
