We are delighted to announce that Amanda Meusz and Gráinne Mellon have been nominated for ‘Advocate of the Year’ at the Women & Diversity in Law Awards 2025.
The Women & Diversity in Law Awards 2025 will be held on Tuesday 18 March 2025.
View the full shortlist here.
The Advocate of the Year Award recognises those who have made an exceptional contribution to the legal profession both through the quality of their legal work and their promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I). We are delighted that both Amanda Meusz and Gráinne Mellon have been shortlisted in this category.
Amanda Mesuz – Advocate of te Year
Amanda Meusz, called to the Bar in 1986, is a passionate advocate for children’s rights and the most vulnerable parents in society. She has vast experience representing victims of trauma, and parents and children with mental health difficulties and learning disabilities. Amanda has developed an innovative and trauma-informed approach to representing vulnerable clients in proceedings and the aftermath of proceedings.
Amanda was part of the legal team who won Family Law Case of the Year at the Family Law Awards 2022. She acted for the children’s guardian in the Supreme Court case of H-W (Children) (No 2) [2022] UKSC 17. Amanda was shortlisted for Family Law Junior of the Year at the Legal 500 Bar Awards in 2024 and 2022.
Amanda’s experience in complex care cases has aided her role as a Champion for Lawyers Who Care CIC (LWC), an organisation that is committed to breaking down barriers for care-experienced aspiring lawyers. She trains LWC mentors for their mandatory Trauma-Informed course, and is a passionate mentor, seeking new opportunities to help care-experienced people.
We are also delighted that this organisation has been shortlisted at the Women & Diversity in Law Awards 2025 for ‘Not-for-Profit Organisation or Representative Body of the Year’, as has their Co-Founder and Co-Director, Lucy Barnes, for ‘DE&I Champion of the Year – Barrister’. Kate-Aubrey Johnson of Garden Court Chambers is Lucy Barnes’ fellow Co-Founder and has worked tirelessly to support care-experienced people, publishing her ‘Dare To Care: Representing care experienced young people‘ guide in September 2023, alongside Dr Laura Janes, consultant solicitor at GT Stewart, and in collaboration with the policy forum at the Drive Forward Foundation.
Garden Court Chambers is a proud founding partner of Lawyers Who Care CIC. We were delighted to host LWC’s launch event in May 2024 and have held further trainings in collaboration with LWC, including a trauma informed training for family practitioners in September 2024. Many of our members are LWC mentors and we stand firmly behind LWC’s mission to remove the obstacles care-experienced people face to provide them with opportunity, support and guidance to pursue a career in law.
Gráinne Mellon – Advocate of the Year
Gráinne Mellon is a public law specialist with expertise in human rights, civil liberties and equality law. She champions the rights of vulnerable members of society and is renowned for her ground-breaking human rights litigation in UK and international courts. She acts in discrimination cases and on behalf of children, vulnerable adults, refugees and trafficking victims.
Her practice includes education, community care, Court of Protection, immigration law, children’s rights and discrimination law and is recommended in the UK legal directories in seven areas (1) international human rights; (2) civil liberties and human rights; (3) administrative law; (4) community care; (5) education; (6) court of protection and (7) immigration. She is appointed to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s preferred Panel of Counsel (A Panel). In addition to her domestic practice, Gráinne acts and advises in international and European human rights law.
Gráinne was shortlisted as a finalist in the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards 2022 for Barrister of the Year and is the Vice-Chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee, the international human rights arm of the Bar Council, where she has served for over a decade. She formerly taught International Human Rights Law at the London School of Economics, where she was also a Fellow at the LSE’s Centre for Human Rights. Gráinne is appointed to sit as a Recorder in the South-Eastern Circuit as well as as a Judge of the Court of Protection and in the Mental Health Tribunal.