Handling ethical dilemmas at the family and civil Bar

Fenner Moeran KC

Fenner Moeran KC was called in 1996 and took silk in 2014. He is one of the two co-chairs of the Bar Council’s Ethics Committee since 2023, having joined the committee over 20 years ago. Within the Ethics Committee, he has specialisations in civil issues relating to disclosure, confidentiality and conflicts of duty. At the Bar he has a wide-ranging commercial Chancery practice, with specialisms in trusts, civil fraud, pensions and financial services. 

Zeena Begum

Zeena is an experienced barrister who has practised in a number of different areas of law, including general civil and commercial law. More recently, Zeena has specialised in Chancery law and pensions law.

Zeena is an ethics trainer at Gray’s Inn, having trained students and new practitioners in ethics for a number of years. Prior to this, Zeena was a visiting lecturer, where she taught the civil law programme to part-time students studying the Bar practice and training course. Zeena was the sole tutor for the civil course and delivered ethics training to the students.

Andrew Granville Stafford

Andrew has been a member of the Bar Council’s Ethics Committee since 2015 and is currently one of its co-Vice Chairs. He was an elected member of the Bar Council from 2015 to 2022. He is a previous Chair of the Bar Council’s Direct Access Panel and co-author of the Lexis-Nexis guide to directaccess. Since 2011 he has been a BSB approved Public Access Trainer and he will be speaking about issues related to public access instructions.

Ruth Kirby KC

Ruth Kirby KC is a barrister, arbitrator and mediator. She specialises in law relating to children, elderly people and sports law (disciplinary and child protection issues). Ruth advises out of court but much of her work is concentrated in the court room setting, working both as a barrister and mediator. She has specialised for the last 20 years in cases involving cross jurisdictional disputes. She is qualified as a barrister in England and Wales and in Ireland. She is also an arbitrator in children’s cases. She enjoys learning about and from practices in foreign jurisdictions and, in 2019, organised an international symposium on family law in Tokyo and was part of the recent Bar Council family law delegation to the UAE.

Deshpal Panesar KC

Deshpal is a King’s Counsel at Old Square Chambers specialising in employment and discrimination. He is a member of the Bar Council, sitting on the ethics committee, former Chair of the Employment Law Bar Association, and a Commissioner at the Institute of Directors.