Neil is instructed in all aspects of criminal work including serious violence, drugs, fraud and regulatory offences. Praised for the cogency of his submissions in the Court of Appeal, Neil is able to distil complicated arguments and make them accessible to client and court alike. He is known for a friendly and approachable manner, with a knack for putting even difficult clients at ease.
Neil has served as an elected member of the Bar Council and on the executive committee of the Criminal Bar Association. He is particularly technically adept and was a long standing member of the IT panel of the Bar Council, as well as the practitioners group advising on the digitisation of the justice system.
Outside of the law, Neil is a non-executive director on the governing body of NHS Bexley Clinical Commissioning Group. This NHS body plans and commissions healthcare services with an annual budget in excess of £270 million.
Notable cases:
- R v W & W (Cayman Islands) – led junior. The case focused on corruptly obtained contracts for IT services. During the course of the trial, evidence was heard from a former Government minister, high-ranking civil servants and senior staff at the Health Service. The case had links to numerous jurisdictions and also touched on the FIFA corruption allegations.
- R v S (Cayman Islands) – led junior. A high-profile fraud case involving the former President of the local University (ongoing).
- Serious Fraud Office v C – a bribery and corruption case involving payments to foreign public officials to win contracts for the printing of currency.
- Serious Fraud Office v P – a USD 500 million hedge fund fraud where artificial swap trades were constructed to inflate the value of the fund.
- R v C and L – led junior. A case of attempted murder using sulphuric acid.
- R v D and others – murder and violent disorder (ongoing).
- R v L and others – grievous bodily harm and assisting an offender offences following a gang-related turf war.
- R v M and others – a grievous bodily harm offence where the complainant, a paranoid schizophrenic, was stabbed in the chest causing life threatening injuries.
- R v A and others – a large-scale fight in the middle of a busy public road, ending with six people needing hospital treatment including one with multiple stab wounds.
- R v H – Possession with intent to supply class A drugs where the defendant claimed he had been kidnapped and forced to commit the offences. Complex legal arguments around the applicability of the Modern Slavery Act and its relevance in considering the interests of justice to continue the prosecution.
- R v R – an attempted rape involving a stranger abducted from the street. The defendant had unusual and complex communication difficulties requiring a range of expert evidence to establish he was unfit to stand trial.
- R v H – Multiple counts of fly-tipping, breach of duty of care and forgery. The waste included bonded and unbonded asbestos, with the total waste weighing several hundred tonnes.
- R v S – Offences of fraudulent trading under the Companies Act, and misconduct during winding up under the Insolvency Act.
- R v S (Court of Appeal) – an application for leave to appeal against sentence in a conspiracy to supply cocaine case involving 5kg of drugs and an undercover operation lasting three months.
- R v R (Court of Appeal) – a successful appeal against sentence in a case in which the defendant made admissions to dealing drugs in a pre-sentence report but had pleaded guilty to simple possession.