18 October 2010

The former chairman of the Family Law Bar Association, Lucy Theis QC, has been appointed to be a Justice of the High Court with effect from 15 November 2010.

The Lord Chief Justice will assign her to the to the Family Division following the retirement of Mr Justice Singer on 8 November who has sat as a High Court judge since 1993.

Theis, 49, was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn in 1982 and took Silk in 2003. She was appointed a Recorder in 2000 and is approved to sit as a deputy High Court Judge. She has been head of Field Court Chambers since 2005 where in August she was nominated for the Silk of the Year in the Family category of the Chambers Bar Awards 2010. 

As chairman of the Family Law Bar Association, Theis led a campaign in 2009 against government plans to further cut legal aid fees for family barristers. She proposed that the government introduced a graduated fee scheme whereby barristers are paid in relation to the complexity of a case.

In an interview last year with Family Law Newswatch, Theis said: "You need to have a scheme that does not over reward the simple cases and properly rewards the complex cases. Then you actually have a tiered system so that the five minute cases are paid because they are a five minute case and the five day cases are paid because they are a five day case. But at the moment they have one fee that covers five minutes and five days. It's just mad and frankly irresponsible".

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