Katherine Olley

year of call: 1999

areas of law

Practice Summary

Katherine Olley is a public law specialist, recommended in the Chambers & Partners and Legal 500 directories since 2005 as a leading junior in the fields of administrative and public law, local government and education: “a persuasive advocate whose skeleton arguments and written advice are of a very high standard”, “has excellent communication skills and deals with very difficult clients with ease”, “highly impressive”, “a rising star”, “gives clear and precise advice”, “is admired for the breadth of her practice”, “popular among sources for being unflappable: ‘She is not fazed by someone throwing a spanner in the works halfway through a case and can immediately see a simple solution to any obstructions in the road- she has total mastery of her brief’”.

Kate is a member of the Attorney-General’s ‘B’ Panel of Junior Counsel to the Crown,  appointed in February 2007 after two years’ experience on the ‘C’ panel. She is regularly instructed by ‘claimant’ public law firms and on behalf of a wide range of Government departments and agencies.

Kate has strong human rights and judicial review experience, practising primarily in the areas of education, prisons, mental health, community care, immigration & asylum (including cases involving national security), social security, planning and general local government (including Code of Conduct issues). She has substantial experience in safeguarding vulnerable groups matters (formerly the PoVA, PoCA and List 99 schemes) before the First-tier Tribunal. She is also well-versed in Data Protection and Freedom of Information Act issues. Kate appears regularly in the High Court and Court of Appeal and the First-tier and Upper Tribunals.

She is general editor of Arden Davies Publishing’s Review of Mental Health Law and consultant editor of their Journal of Community Care law.

Kate has conducted many training sessions on the European Convention on Human Rights for local lawyers, judges and NGO representatives in various countries including Albania, Turkey, Ukraine, Kosovo, the Caucasus and the Russian Federation, invited by the Council of Europe’s Directorate General of Human Rights.

In 2002 Kate was the Pegasus Scholar to Hong Kong where she worked as a judicial assistant to Justice of Appeal Frank Stock in the Court of Appeal.

In 2001 she was Chair of the Free Representation Unit, for whom undertook many cases in the fields of employment law (discrimination and unfair dismissal) and social security law. She represented FRU on the then Attorney-General's Pro Bono Co-ordinating Committee.

Mediation

Kate has been a CEDR-accredited mediator since 2005 and was a delegate to the South Asia Regional ADR conference in March 2004. In 2006 she initiated the organisation of mediation training in Pakistan including in the North-West Frontier Province (Peshawar). She does not limit her interest to the resolution of cases in any particular area of law, but as a public and administrative law specialist has special insight into the context underlying those matters.

QUALIFICATIONS

Kate graduated from St. Hilda’s College, Oxford University with First Class Honours in Oriental Studies (Chinese). She then completed her CPE at City University.

She is a CEDR-accredited Mediator.

CASES

INQUIRIES

There are no inquiries available.