Laurene acts in the areas of equality law, employment, human rights, personal injury and clinical negligence. She also regularly acts as investigator, and provides awareness training to prevent discrimination and harassment at work.

Employment

Laurene acts in the full range of employment claims, including on health and safety at work, pay and conditions, redundancies, working time and collective activities.

She has acted in appeals to the EAT for claimants and respondents including a collective pay claim for 58 claimants.

Laurene has acted in several large group claims. She was one of 3 counsel representing nearly 10,000 claimants in a successful discrimination and victimisation claim, reported by Channel 4.

She has experience in equal pay claims including defining work of ‘equal value’, and the material factor defence.

Discrimination

Laurene acts in claims for discrimination in services and housing as well as discrimination at work. This includes failure to make adjustments for disabled service users, discriminatory tenancy conditions and unequal access to services.

Many of Laurene’s clients are people living with disabilities, including invisible disabilities and disabilities made worse by working conditions.

Laurene has particular experience in pregnancy and maternity discrimination, including redundancy after maternity leave. She has written about the gaps in the law to address gender inequality at work, especially for new and expectant mothers or new and expectant mothers.

Human rights & civil liberties

Laurene welcomes instructions in actions against the police, especially those involving equality and human rights breaches. She has acted in several cases for workers, students and public officials mistreated for expressing a political belief and/or exercising their right to freedom of speech and assembly.

She successfully represented the claimant in a landmark action against the police where the Court found that the police acted unconstitutionally and oppressively in arresting a protester expressing antizionist views.

Personal injury and clinical negligence

Laurene regularly acts and advises in multi-track clinical negligence claims. This has included complex birth cases where liability is disputed, and infant claims with complex future loss calculations.

She also represents workers in personal injury claims against their employer, including for psychiatric injury as well as harassment under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

Investigations & awareness training

Laurene is often instructed to investigate grievances / whistleblowing complaints in NGOs, universities, trade unions and multinationals.

She also offers bespoke equality training including awareness sessions to assist employers discharge their duty of preventing sexual harassment at work.

Public law

Laurene was on the counsel team of the Infected Blood Inquiry and also undertook work for the Grenfell Tower Inquiry and the Covid-19 inquiry.

Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL)

Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC)

Discrimination Law Association (DLA)

Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers

Industrial Law Society (ILS)

Bar Professional Training Course with LLM (with Distinction) City, University of London

Graduate Diploma in Law, City, University of London

MA Politics and Arabic (with Distinction) University of Edinburgh

Inner Temple – 2018 BPTC Exhibition Award

Inner Temple – 2017 GDL Exhibition Award

Evan Ashfield Memorial Prize 2018 for best BPTC - FRU result

33 Bedford Row 2018 Prize for best performance in Clinical Legal Practice (City Law School)

University of Edinburgh – 2014 Irene Crawford Prize for best undergraduate in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies

University of Edinburgh – 2014 Carole Hillenbrand Prize for best undergraduate dissertation in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies

Laurene loves languages. She speaks French, Arabic and Spanish and is learning Dutch and Farsi.