Garden Court’s Keir Monteith KC will be chairing the Criminal Bar Association’s Black Barristers Committee, to be launched on Friday 6 November 2026.
The Criminal Bar Association will launch its Black Barristers’ Committee at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms on Great Queen Street. The Hon Mrs Justice Obi will be the guest speaker.
The Committee is a standing committee of the Association in its own right, rather than a strand of work within another committee’s remit. As Keir puts it, it is not a line in another committee’s terms of reference.
The evening runs from 18:00 to 01:00, with wine and canapés on arrival, guest speakers, and a DJ afterwards. A collection will be taken for Kids of Colour and Spark2Life, two organisations working with young people affected by the criminal justice system.
Find out more here.
Keir Monteith KC
Keir Monteith KC is a highly sought-after leading silk who represents clients facing heavyweight criminal allegations. He is ranked for criminal law in Chambers UK and the Legal 500, and is also ranked in Tier 1 for Fraud in the Legal 500.
Keir is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Law at The University of Manchester School of Social Sciences. In 2022, Keir co-authored the report ‘Racial Bias & the Bench’ as a University Simon Fellow, with Professor Eithne Quinn of the University of Manchester. The report concluded the judiciary is institutionally racist.
Keir led the legal team representing Ade Adedeji in the ‘Manchester 10’ case, alongside Audrey Cherryl Mogan. An aspiring law student, Ade was sentenced in a racialised ‘gang’ narrative, after sending messages in a group chat following the murder of his best friend. He served three years for a crime he did not commit before his conviction was quashed.
He is a co-founding member of Art Not Evidence, launched to advocate for a restriction on the use of creative expression as evidence in criminal trials. Keir is a member of the JUSTICE Council.
