Keating Chambers

Lucy is a leading KC specialising in construction, engineering, energy and shipbuilding. She is “an out-and-out star, a gifted legal mind and persuasive advocate who can cut through endless legal and technical complexities to get to what really matters." Her client service is second to none: she is business-savvy (understanding that legal risk connects to business consequence), responsive and approachable. Lucy enjoys working as a team with her lay and professional clients, as well as the wider expert team. She is practical and hands-on. Her aim is always to make “stressful litigation feel like driving in a comfortable limo.”

Lucy is frequently instructed in high value and high profile litigation and international arbitration in relation to energy projects from oil and gas to windfarms to nuclear, and major infrastructure projects, including PFI/PPP. She has a particular specialism in shipbuilding disputes. Her practice includes claims for and against construction professionals in these sectors and project-related issues such as insurance, bonds and guarantees. In the UK, she is also instructed in relation to multiple Building Safety Act matters.

Her impressive specialist practice has a particular focus on large projects involving complex factual, technical and contractual disputes. Lucy appears regularly in the English courts including at appellate level and in international arbitration globally. Her extensive international experience includes all major institutional rules and ad-hoc arbitrations, and many disputes in civil code jurisdictions.

Lucy is always in demand for her forceful advocacy, commercial approach and “stellar” intellectual ability. She has recently been described as “an exceptionally good operator who is easy to deal with and wears her enormous intellect lightly,” “extremely talented with razor-sharp intellect and boundless energy” and “A great advocate, very easy style, clients love working with her.”

Lucy’s energy and shipbuilding practice and her experience of the offshore standard forms are reflected in her co-editorship (with Mr Justice Constable) of the leading text in its field, Keating on Offshore Construction and Marine Engineering (3rd Edn., published August 2024). She is also co-editor of the looseleaf Keating on JCT and for many years has made extensive contribution, including chapter authorship, to Keating on Construction Contracts.

In 2026, Lucy was named Legal 500's Construction and Energy Silk of the Year. In 2024 and 2025, Lucy was nominated variously for Chambers & Partners’ Construction Silk of the Year, Legal 500’s Construction and Energy Silk of the Year and Legal 500’s Professional Negligence Silk of the Year. In 2023, Lucy was nominated for Chambers & Partners’ Diversity and Inclusion Outstanding Contribution award and was elected a Bencher of Gray’s Inn. She was one of The Lawyer’s “Hot 100” in 2021. She has been top ranked in Chambers & Partners, Legal 500 and Lexology Index in construction, energy, international arbitration and professional negligence for many years and has been a Lexology Index Global Elite Thought Leader in Construction in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. She has been recommended by Lexology in arbitration, construction, energy and natural resources and professional negligence for many years. As a junior, she won Chambers and Partners’ Construction Junior of the Year in 2013 and was nominated again in 2015.

• 1998: University of Manchester (BA Hons English Language and Literature 1st Class)

• 2000: PgDL

• 2001: Called to the Bar and Prince of Wales Scholar at Gray’s Inn

• 2002: Tenancy at 2 Temple Gardens 2002

• 2004: Tenancy at Keating Chambers

• 2013: Won Chambers & Partners’ Construction Junior of the Year

• 2015: Nominated for Chambers & Partners’ Construction Junior of the Year

• 2018: Appointed Queen’s Counsel

• 2018-2019: Sabbatical working for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in Freetown, Sierra Leone

• 2021: One of The Lawyer’s “Hot 100”

• 2023: Appointed a Bencher of Gray’s Inn. Nominated for the Chambers & Partners’ Diversity & Inclusion Outstanding Contribution award

• 2024: Nominated for Legal 500’s Professional Negligence Silk of the Year

• 2025: Nominated for Chambers & Partners’ Construction Silk of the Year and Legal 500’s Construction and Energy Silk of the Year

• 2026: Won Legal 500’s Construction and Energy Silk of the Year

• TECBAR;

• COMBAR;

• SCL.

• Inns of Court School of Law (2001 Bar Vocational Course Very Competent);

• Postgraduate Diploma in Law (2000);

• BA English Language and Literature (First Class) University of Manchester (1998).

Lucy enjoys reading. Her current recommendations are The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray (he got the Booker nomination for The Bee Sting but this is better), Simon Mason’s DI Wilkins series and Mr Phillips by John Lanchester. Sadly the 2019 and subsequent Reachers are to be avoided at all costs but all the previous ones remain excellent.

Lucy took a sabbatical from the Bar between June 2018 and December 2019 to work as a Senior Advisor for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. She spent 18 months in Sierra Leone working closely with the Mayor of Freetown, the extraordinary Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr OBE, now presidential candidate for 2028. Lucy’s blog describing her experiences is at https://thehillsofthechanklybore.com.