Law Reform Lecture 2023

Sir Geoffrey Vos was appointed Master of the Rolls and Head of Civil Justice in England and Wales on 11 January 2021. 

Prior to his appointment, Sir Geoffrey was Chancellor of the High Court from October 2016, responsible for the work of the Business and Property Courts.

In 1977 he was Called to the Bar and practised in commercial and chancery litigation. He took silk in 1993 and served as chair of the Chancery Bar Association from 1999 to 2001 and as chair of the Bar Council in 2007. In 1999, Sir Geoffrey began his judicial career with appointment as a deputy High Court Judge. Having sat in the Courts of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey between 2005 and 2009; in the Court of Appeal of the Cayman Islands between 2008 and 2009, he was appointed as a High Court Judge in October 2009.

Sir Geoffrey was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal in 2013, and served as President of the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary from 2015 to 2016.

He is chair of both the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives, and of the Forum on Historical Manuscripts and Academic Research. He is a member of the LawtechUK Panel and chair of its UK Jurisdiction Taskforce. From 2008-2011, he was also chairman of the Social Mobility Foundation.

Sir Geoffrey is a member of the Council the European Law Institute and of the Steering Group of the Standing International Forum of Commercial Courts. He is Treasurer of Lincoln’s Inn for 2023, and is an honorary fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. He was awarded an LLD (hons) by the University of Hull in January 2023.

Jamie Susskind is a barrister at 11 KBW, and author of both The Digital Republic: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century (Bloomsbury 2022), and the award-winning bestseller Future Politics (2018), which received the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize.

The Evening Standard has said “Susskind could be one of the great public intellectual rock stars of our time.” Tony Blair has called him “one of the foremost thinkers on the transformative impact of the technology revolution”.

Jamie is a graduate of the University of Oxford and has held fellowships at Harvard and Cambridge. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Times, the New Statesman, Wired, and elsewhere.

Shobana Iyer is an experienced barrister and arbitrator with over 20 years' broad commercial and corporate experience. She sits on the Bar Council’s IT Panel and plays an active role in engaging with the implementation of IT developments, data protection/security and AI on behalf of the Bar Council.

Shobana is presently the co-vice chair of the Legal Services Committee of the Bar Council of England and Wales and is appointed on the European Commission's List of Chairpersons for Arbitrations for EU trade agreements with third countries. 

As a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCiarb) and a committee member of its London branch, she frequently deals with the impact of emerging technologies in dispute resolution. She is a specialist in international law matters and conducted arbitrations involving international trade, energy, corporate matters, insurance, intellectual property rights, arts, sport and technology (including blockchain and cryptoassets), in addition to general commercial contracts. 

In addition to the uses and implications of LegalTech and FinTech services,  Shobana is a leader in addressing the legal issues and regulation of emerging technologies (from the artificial intelligence to cryptoassets, DAOs and the Metaverse), which provide added legal challenges and opportunities.