Alasdair Mackenzie > Doughty Street Chambers > London, England > Barrister Profile

Doughty Street Chambers
53-54 DOUGHTY STREET
LONDON
WC1N 2LS
England

Work Department

Immigration

Position

Alasdair Mackenzie is an experienced leading junior who specialises in immigration and asylum law and practices generally in public law.

Alasdair is regularly instructed as sole or leading counsel in appeals to the Upper Tribunal and the Court of Appeal and in judicial reviews in both the High Court and Upper Tribunal.  He appears frequently before the Upper Tribunal and First-Tier Tribunal in all areas of immigration law, including refugee, human rights, family, EEA, student, points-based system, bail and deportation cases.  He also appears in judicial reviews of trafficking decisions and age assessments.

Career

Year of call: 2004; Gray’s Inn.

Before joining Doughty Street from pupillage in 2005, Alasdair spent many years as a campaigner and advice worker on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.  He was among the founders of the charity Asylum Aid, of which he was Co-ordinator from 1990 to 2002.  He spent some years as an executive committee member of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, of which he remains an active member, and is a former Chair of the Asylum Rights Campaign and of the Refugee Legal Group.

He has acted as an expert consultant to the Immigration Services Commissioner, the regulator of immigration advisers.  Alasdair has written or contributed to a number of significant reports and publications on asylum and immigration issues.

Languages

German
French
Russian

Memberships

Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association

The Constitutional and Administrative Law Bar Association

Human Rights Lawyers Association

Liberty

Justice

Education

Winchester College; Oxford University (1989, BA, modern languages); London Metropolitan University (2003, PgDL); College of Law (2004, BVC).

Lawyer Rankings

London Bar > Immigration (including business immigration)

(Leading Juniors)Ranked: Tier 1

Alasdair MackenzieDoughty Street ChambersAlasdair is a phenomenal advocate. He is extremely thorough and is able to work to a very high standard under time pressure. His written work is first-class, being persuasive, detailed and accurate.’

Doughty Street Chambers is a ‘real human rights driving force in the market‘, with casework that covers the spectrum of immigration, nationality, and asylum law. Litigation surrounding immigration enforcement is a particular strength of the set with its own immigration detention group, but the chambers has experience handling trafficking and business immigration work also. Laura Dubinsky KC has led a team representing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the intervention into the Rwanda litigation in R (AAA and others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, with Alasdair Mackenzie and Shu Shin Luh have represented refugee claimants in related cases. Joe Middleton KC has represented a high-profile HNW individual in a judicial review of the Home Secretary’s exclusion decision before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in E6 v SSHD.