Officers of the Bar Council

Kirsty Brimelow KC

Kirsty Brimelow KC is Chair of the Bar 2026. Kirsty practises in criminal, international and public law from Doughty Street Chambers, where she is on the management board as head of the criminal law team. Kirsty was appointed Queen’s Counsel (now King’s Counsel) in 2011. Kirsty has the distinction of having led in both Civil and Criminal Courts of Appeal, the Supreme Court, the Privy Council, and the European Court of Human Rights.

In 2021, Kirsty was appointed a deputy High Court judge in the King’s Bench Division and in 2022 appointed a Recorder. She is an accredited mediator and acts in conflict resolution. Kirsty worked in the Colombia peace process and negotiated an historic apology from the former President of Colombia to a community of farmers, for a massacre.

Kirsty was a member of the Bar Council Public Affairs Committee and a Bar Council Young Spokesperson from 1998 to 2008. Kirsty was the first female Chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee (2012 to 2018) and served as the Vice Chair and then Chair of the Criminal Bar Association (2021 to 2023). In 2022, she led negotiations with the government of an historic increase in fees for criminal barristers.

Kirsty is a Bencher of Gray’s Inn and was elected to the management board (2020 to 2023). She is an experienced high-level trainer, facilitator, and conference speaker in international human rights around the world, holding consultancies to the United Nations and OSCE (the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe). She has driven law change including in sexual offences law in Denmark and FGM protection orders in England and Wales. 

In 2018 Kirsty won both the First 100 Years ‘Inspirational Woman in Law Barrister of the Year’ Award and Advocate’s pro bono ‘International Barrister of the Year’ Award. She twice has featured as The Times Lawyer of the week. Kirsty is a trustee and director of the leading global environmental charity WWF UK, visiting professor at Goldsmiths Faculty of Law (2019 to 2025), and founding member of the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk. Kirsty was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts for her service to human rights.

Heidi Stonecliffe KC

Heidi Stonecliffe KC is Vice Chair of the Bar 2026. Heidi is an employed barrister with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) where she specialises in complex multi-defendant trials involving allegations of organised crime and homicide, often with an international dimension. In December 2025 she joined 9 Bedford Row as a non-working door tenant. She will continue in employed practice with the CPS whilst maintaining he continued links with the self-employed bar through her door tenancy at 9 Bedford Row.

Heidi was called to the Bar by Inner Temple in 1996 and began at the self-employed Bar in chambers then moved to the employed Bar in 1999, practising in criminal defence work, and then to the CPS in 2006, as an advocate. Heidi was appointed Queen’s Counsel (now King’s Counsel) in 2020, becoming the first woman in the CPS to take silk and only the fourth person in CPS’s history to do so.

In 2024 Heidi was Chair of the Bar Council’s Employed Barristers’ Committee representing barristers across the employed sector – including in the public sector, the Armed Forces, the commercial sector and law firms. Heidi has a particular interest in barrister wellbeing and supporting the next generation at the Bar. She is Master of Wellbeing and an outreach volunteer at Inner Temple, where she is also a Governing Bencher. She is also an Inner and Keble advocacy trainer and visiting lecturer at the Inns of Court College of Advocacy (ICCA). Heidi was the first person in her family to go to university (to the LSE) and is now a pupil supervisor with a particular interest in promoting equality, diversity and inclusion and social mobility. Heidi is the first barrister to be elected as Vice Chair from the employed Bar.   

Lucinda Orr

Lucinda is the treasurer of the Bar Council for 2026. Further to pupillage at Quadrant Chambers in 2006, she has practised at the US firms of Skadden Arps and Quinn Emanuel, and since 2014 has been at Enyo Law LLP in London, where she is a partner. She specialises in complex, cross-border litigation, and civil fraud. She has been appointed by the Lord Chancellor as an Examiner of the Court, pursuant to CPR34.15, and by the Culture Secretary to the Treasure Valuation Committee, to advise on the fair market value of declared Treasure finds for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.