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Christina Blacklaws

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Christina Blacklaws
174th President of the Law Society of England and Wales
In office
July 2018 – July 2019
Preceded byJoe Egan
Succeeded bySimon Davis
Personal details
Born1965 or 1966[1]
EducationExeter College, Oxford
OccupationSolicitor

Christina Blacklaws (born 1965 or 1966) is an English solicitor who served as the 174th President of the Law Society of England and Wales from July 2018 to July 2019, the fifth woman to hold the office.[2][3] A family lawyer by background, she co-founded the London family law firm Blacklaws Davis, which merged into TV Edwards in 2011, and then launched the family law service of Co-operative Legal Services as one of the first alternative business structures in England and Wales.[4][1]

During her presidency she led the Law Society's research and campaign on women in leadership in law and chaired its Technology and Law Policy Commission, whose 2019 report on the use of algorithms in the criminal justice system called for greater oversight of such systems.[5][6] She was appointed by the Lord Chancellor to chair a government panel on legal technology, later LawtechUK, and has since chaired the Judicial Pension Board.[2][7][8]

Early life and education

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Blacklaws was born in New Zealand and moved to England with her family at the age of ten.[9] She read Jurisprudence at Exeter College, Oxford, matriculating in 1985.[10][11]

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Family law practice

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Blacklaws qualified as a solicitor in 1991.[1][2] She went on to develop and manage law firms, including a virtual law firm.[2]

In 2006 she co-founded Blacklaws Davis with Maud Davis. By 2011 it had 35 lawyers and described itself as London's largest specialist family law firm.[4] In 2011 Blacklaws Davis, together with the criminal and care firm Dundons, merged with the East London legal aid firm TV Edwards from 1 May 2011; Blacklaws said the combination would create "a true leader in the field of public law children work".[4][12] Blacklaws had been senior partner of Blacklaws Davis until the merger.[1] At that time she was also chief assessor of the Law Society's children panel and chaired its legal affairs and policy board.[1]

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In late 2011 Blacklaws left TV Edwards with fellow partner Jenny Beck to join Co-operative Legal Services (CLS) as a director and head of strategy and policy for its new family law unit, which was due to launch once CLS was licensed as an alternative business structure by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.[1][13] CLS's family service, headed by Blacklaws, obtained a legal aid contract in April 2012 and launched in July 2012 with fixed-price services.[14] She later became CLS's director of policy,[2] and left at the end of March 2014 to set up a consultancy, at a time when the wider Co-operative Group was in difficulty.[13]

Cripps

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In 2014 Blacklaws became director of client services at Cripps[15] (later Cripps Pemberton Greenish), a top-100 UK law firm, a post she held until around the start of her Law Society presidency.[16][17]

Law Society

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Blacklaws served on Law Society councils and committees for about 15 years before her presidency,[11] including as council member for the Women Lawyers Division, and was a member of the Family Justice Council and a trustee of the pro bono charity LawWorks.[2] She was elected deputy vice-president in 2016 and became vice-president in 2017.[16][5]

She took office as president on 5 July 2018, succeeding Joe Egan, and became the fifth woman to lead the society and the first female Oxford graduate to do so.[2][11] Her presidency coincided with her appointment by the Lord Chancellor, David Gauke, to chair a new panel of legal technology professionals intended to accelerate the development and adoption of legal technology in the UK.[2] She was succeeded by Simon Davis in July 2019.[3]

Women in leadership in law

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Blacklaws made gender equality in the profession a central priority.[18] She had begun the Women in Leadership in Law project as deputy vice-president, and during her presidency the society committed to holding 100 roundtables on women's representation in legal leadership.[5][10] A Law Society survey released in March 2018, described as the largest ever on women in law, identified unconscious bias as the main barrier to women's career progression.[16] Blacklaws also examined the reasons women left the law, work that was further examined in a 2022.[19] Working with the International Bar Association, the project concluded that the under-representation of women in legal leadership was a global phenomenon involving systemic bias.[5] The Gazette reported that Blacklaws was personally instrumental in persuading some large City firms to include partners in their gender pay gap reports.[16]

Technology and Law Policy Commission

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Blacklaws chaired the Law Society's Technology and Law Policy Commission, set up in summer 2018 with co-commissioners Sofia Olhede and Sylvie Delacroix to examine the use of algorithms in the justice system of England and Wales.[20][11] Its report, Algorithms in the Criminal Justice System, published in June 2019, found that police and other agencies had been deploying algorithmic tools such as facial recognition and predictive policing with "a worrying lack of oversight", and recommended strengthening data protection law, clarifying the lawful basis for such systems and creating a national register of algorithms used in criminal justice.[6][21][22]

Later career

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In November 2019 Blacklaws was appointed legal services ambassador at KPMG, a part-time strategic advisory role supporting the development of the firm's legal practice.[3] She has also run her own consultancy, Blacklaws Consulting.[23]

She chairs the advisory panel of LawtechUK, the Ministry of Justice-backed programme to support legal technology in the UK; the panel has included the Master of the Rolls, Sir Geoffrey Vos, and Richard Susskind.[7][24][23] The Lord Chancellor approved her appointment as chair of the Judicial Pension Board, which oversees the judicial pension scheme.[8]

Blacklaws has held non-executive roles with law firms, including the offshore firm Ogier.[25]

Awards and honors

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Blacklaws was elected an honorary fellow of Exeter College in 2023.[26]

References

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  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Baksi, Catherine (3 November 2011). "Interview: Christina Blacklaws". Law Society Gazette. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "New Society president Blacklaws to lead government Law Tech push". Law Society Gazette. 6 July 2018. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 Slingo, Jemma (4 November 2019). "KPMG hires ex-Law Society president". Law Society Gazette. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 "London legal aid firms to merge". Family Law. LexisNexis. 1 March 2011. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "President perspectives: Christina Blacklaws". The Law Society. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  6. 1 2 "Justice algorithms 'need urgent oversight' – Society". Law Society Gazette. 4 June 2019. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  7. 1 2 "About us". LawtechUK. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  8. 1 2 "Judicial Pension Board – Chair". Ministry of Justice, Public Appointments. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  9. ↑ Baksi, Catherine (23 January 2025). "Christina Blacklaws: 'I'd love to see firms embrace tech faster'". The Times.
  10. 1 2 "Exonian Christina Blacklaws appointed president of the Law Society". Exeter College, Oxford. 11 July 2018. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  11. 1 2 3 4 "Oxford alumna becomes president of the Law Society". Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. 18 July 2018. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  12. ↑ Baksi, Catherine (1 September 2011). "TV Edwards reveals two new mergers". Law Society Gazette. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  13. 1 2 "Blacklaws quits troubled Co-Op". Law Society Gazette. 10 April 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  14. ↑ "Co-op targets family legal aid – with loyalty points". Law Society Gazette. 24 May 2012. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  15. ↑ Gannagé-Stewart, Hannah (8 September 2014). "Cripps appoints Christina Blacklaws as client services director". Lawyer – via EBSCOHost.
  16. 1 2 3 4 "An agenda on gender". Law Society Gazette. 9 July 2018. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  17. ↑ "Change is Coming: Christina Blacklaws, the Next Law Society President". Artificial Lawyer. 17 April 2018. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  18. ↑ Bowcott, Owen (17 April 2019). "Christina Blacklaws | Why the 'masculine shape of the law needs to change'". The Guardian. p. 44.
  19. ↑ Winstone, Julia (2022). Guney, Gizem; Davies, David; Lee, Po-Han (eds.). Towards Gender Equality in Law - An Analysis of State Failures from a Global Perspective. p. 179.
  20. ↑ Blacklaws, Christina (4 June 2019). "Our one-year mission: The Law Society Commission on the use of algorithms in the justice system". The Law Society. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  21. ↑ "Panel urges regulation of algorithms used in criminal justice system". Legal Futures. 6 June 2019. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  22. ↑ Veale, Michael; Delacroix, Sylvie; Olhede, Sofia; Blacklaws, Christina; Adams Bhatti, Sophia (2019). Algorithms in the Criminal Justice System (Report). London: The Law Society of England and Wales. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  23. 1 2 "LawtechUK Panel Member". Ministry of Justice, Public Appointments. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  24. ↑ "LawtechUK works with advice charity to reduce unmet need". Legal Futures. 25 October 2023. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  25. ↑ "Christina Blacklaws". Ogier. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  26. ↑ "Christina Blacklaws". Exeter College. Retrieved 6 October 2026.
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