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Katharine Newton KC

Deputy Head of Chambers

Silk: 2020 | Call: 1999

"Katharine is brilliant and wonderful to work with. She's responsive, extremely hard-working, collegiate, funny and a formidable advocate. I always feel a sense of relief that she's on my side."

Chambers & Partners 2024

"An incisive and formidable advocate, who is razor-sharp on her feet and in her legal analysis. Katharine is an excellent strategist."

The Legal 500 2024

"Technically strong with an impressive ability to get to the essential issues quickly. Her written work is excellent, and Katharine has a clear and punchy style of advocacy that clients love and engages the court. Very easy to work with."

The Legal 500 2023

"Katharine is excellent in complex and high-profile litigation. She is calm and reassuring with the clients and steely in Tribunal."

Chambers & Partners 2023

Overview

Katharine Newton KC is an experienced and highly regarded practitioner who appears regularly in the employment tribunal, High Court and the appellate courts including the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. Prior to taking silk, Katharine was the Chambers & Partners Employment Junior of the Year 2018, and the only junior barrister to appear in The Lawyer Hot 100 2018. Katharine is regularly instructed in high-profile, high-value and complex employment and discrimination claims across a wide range of sectors and her practice over recent years has included some of the most high-profile cases litigated at the Employment Law Bar.

Katharine acts for both employers and employees in every area of employment law, including discrimination of all types, whistleblowing, victimisation, unfair and wrongful dismissal, TUPE, breach of contract, restrictive covenants, wages and trade union industrial disputes. She acts for a broad range of clients covering the whole spectrum, from large corporate clients, banking and financial institutions, media organisations, royalty, NHS employers, trade unions and local authorities to the full range of Claimants including both individual Claimants and cases involving multi-Claimant test cases. Katharine also has experience in advising on discrimination claims in the “goods and services” sphere. Full details of Katharine’s experience can be found in the “Employment and Discrimination” section of her profile.

Katharine also has extensive experience in conducting both disciplinary and grievance investigations, as well as undertaking department and employer-wide reviews of practice and procedure. Katharine’s investigatory reports have been repeatedly praised by judges in subsequent employment tribunal proceedings. Katharine also has experience of advising and presenting cases at internal disciplinary, grievance and appeal hearings, and sitting as a Chair of internal disciplinary and complaints panels. Full details of Katharine’s experience can be found in the “investigations” sections of her profile.

Katharine has considerable experience of professional disciplinary cases before various regulatory bodies including hearings before the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and the General Teaching Council (GTC). Full details of Katharine’s experience can be found in the “Professional Regulatory & Discipline” section of her profile.

Katharine regularly appears as an advocate in mediations of all types where she has acted for various parties in a wide range of disputes including discrimination, whistleblowing and High Court contractual claims.

Professional Recommendations

 

“Katharine has worked on lots of different investigations. Her style is down to earth and unstuffy.”

Chambers & Partners 2024

“She is a fiercely robust advocate who takes no prisoners. She is utterly approachable and always willing to go the extra mile.”

Chambers & Partners 2024

“Katharine is brilliant and wonderful to work with. She’s responsive, extremely hard-working, collegiate, funny and a formidable advocate. I always feel a sense of relief that she’s on my side.”

Chambers & Partners 2024

“Katharine is able to get to grips with complex cases quickly and can distil the key issues. She is great in tribunal and a very persuasive advocate.”

Chambers & Partners 2024

“An incisive and formidable advocate, who is razor-sharp on her feet and in her legal analysis. Katharine is an excellent strategist.”

The Legal 500 2024

“Katharine is excellent in complex and high-profile litigation. She is calm and reassuring with the clients and steely in Tribunal.”

Chambers & Partners 2023

“Katherine is a fearsome cross-examiner and a specialist in discrimination issues. She handles our more complex Tribunal cases.”

Chambers & Partners 2023

“Technically strong with an impressive ability to get to the essential issues quickly. Her written work is excellent, and Katharine has a clear and punchy style of advocacy that clients love and engages the court. Very easy to work with.”

The Legal 500 2023

“A great eye for detail, meticulously prepared, and a clear and articulate advocate. A worthy addition to the employment silks’ Bar.”

The Legal 500 2022

“She is a tenacious cross-examiner, who is excellent in lengthy discrimination cases or cases involving senior employees, and she is very commercial, extremely personable and offers great advice.” “She is incredibly talented, she has an excellent eye for detail, she is very driven, she holds the attention of the court very well, she is excellent technically and she is a delight to work with.”

Chambers & Partners 2022

“She masters the detail very early on and comes up with innovative and imaginative arguments.” “She’s so incisive – she’s cuts through everything and gets to the nub of the case really quickly; she’s on top of all the papers and in court she’s an absolute force to be reckoned with.”

Chambers & Partners 2021

“Katharine is brilliant but what makes her stand out for me is that she involves herself in the case from the start, masters the detail very early on, and works collaboratively. She has continued to do this after taking silk which makes her a rare barrister in my experience: a silk who wants to get involved in the detail early on and not just before a hearing.”

The Legal 500 2021

“A confident, articulate and knowledgeable barrister who has an unrivalled ability to manage the case and the clients at the same time.” “She has an outstanding ability to express ideas extremely clearly and cut through all of the noise.”

Chambers & Partners 2020

“brilliant, hard-working, resourceful, great strategic and tactical wisdom.”

Legal 500 2020

“A real fighter who will always give 100%.” Sources agree she is “determined, charismatic, and great fun to work with.” Newton is “an excellent all-rounder.” “She has a charm that goes down very well with tribunals,” and is “generally perceived to be a class act” “exceptionally able; she is sensible, bright and fantastic with clients and tribunals.”

Chambers & Partners

Katharine is listed in both Chambers & Partners and The Legal 500 where she is praised for her advocacy skills and is described as “in huge demand due to her impressive reputation for being tough in the tribunal courts and excellent with clients” “hard-working and always prepared to go the extra mile for her clients” “clever, practical and diligent with a lively charm”.

Expertise

Employment & Discrimination

Professional Regulatory & Discipline

Investigations


Recent and current work

Notable cases

Key contacts

Samantha Jones

Deputy Senior Clerk
Samantha Jones Telephone Clerk020 7269 0307 Email Clerk
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Shortlist Updated

Out of hours

William Meade (Senior Clerk)

07970 649 755