Christopher Sharp KC > Chambers of Matthew White > Bristol, United Kingdom: England and Wales > Lawyer Profile
St John's Chambers Offices
St John's Chambers
101 VICTORIA STREET
BRISTOL
BS1 6PU
United Kingdom: England and Wales
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Christopher Sharp KC
Work Department
Family & Divorce, Clinical Negligence, Personal Injury, Court of Protection, Professional Negligence
Position
A personal injury and family law specialist with many years experience, who is acknowledged as one of the leading family and personal injury silks on the circuit, and is a former Head of St John’s Chambers, and subsequently of the Family Practice Group. Wide experience of the appellate courts, both Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. Widely known for his expertise in high-value financial remedy cases in which he is equally at home negotiating multimillion-pound settlements or fighting them in court. Instructed by local authorities, parents, guardians and the official solicitor in cases involving the serious injury or death of a child, cases that always involve complex medical evidence. Because of his expertise in the field of personal injury, he is instructed in divorces involving catastrophic injury to one partner where the subsequent financial remedy proceedings involve financial complexities surrounding the damages awarded. In his personal injury practice, he has particularly strong expertise in catastrophic injuries (brain damage and spinal injuries), complex medical causation issues and appellate matters. Dealing with multimillion-pound claims for both claimant and defendant clients, he is well known for his ability swiftly to identify the key issues in a case, for the depth of his knowledge and for his understanding of highly technical medical points on which a case may stand or fall. Work is almost exactly 50/50 claimant and defendant.
Career
Called 1975; QC 1999; recorder 2004, authorised to hear financial remedy cases 2018; deputy High Court judge (Family) 2011; visiting fellow University of the West of England, regularly contributes articles to the professional press and lectures on subjects related to his areas of practice; Elected a Bencher of the Inner Temple in July 2016.
Memberships
Family Law Bar Association (founder and former chair of the Bristol branch); Personal Injury Bar Association; Professional Negligence Bar Association.
Education
University of Oxford (MA).
Leisure
Real tennis, skiing, sailing, theatre and former Trustee of the Quartet Community Foundation.
Lawyer Rankings
Regional Bar > Western Circuit > Personal injury
(Leading Silks)Ranked: Tier 1Christopher Sharp KC – St John’s Chambers ‘A leading silk in this area. He is fastidious with a fine forensic mind.’
The team at St John’s Chambers is praised by clients for its ‘deep breadth of knowledge on all aspects of personal injury‘. ‘Superb advocate‘ Christopher Sharp KC has an excellent track record in representing claimants and defendants in high-value catastrophic spinal and brain injury cases. Senior junior Andrew McLaughlin is particularly strong as a trial lawyer in this field. In recent work, Matthew White and James Marwick appeared in Brown v South West Lakes Trust and others, a Court of Appeal case arising from a fatal car accident in 2017; issues in the case included the extent of the duty of care owed to unintentional trespassers by occupiers of land adjoining the highway.
Regional Bar > Western Circuit > Family and children law
(Leading Silks: Divorce and Financial Remedy)Ranked: Tier 1Christopher Sharp KC – St John’s Chambers ‘Thorough, tenacious, precise, and measured.’
(Leading Silks: Child Law (Public and Private))Ranked: Tier 1Christopher Sharp KC – St John’s Chambers ‘A formidable cross-examiner with a ferocious intellect.’
St John’s Chambers is a ‘very strong family set‘, housing a team which ‘covers all aspects of family law‘. Christopher Sharp KC ‘is always first-rate‘, with an established track record in acting for guardians, local authorities and parents in serious cases of alleged child abuse, and complex financial remedy claims involving foreign pensions and assets. Judi Evans is ‘determined and unflappable‘, and is sought after for her expertise in cases involving child abduction and international relocation of children. The ‘tenacious‘ Lucy Reed KC recently represented a journalist before the Court of Appeal in a case concerning the publication of a fact-finding judgment and subsequent identification of the parents. Zoe Saunders heads up the family finance group, and is regularly instructed in cases involving cohabitation disputes.