Antonia Benfield is a finalist in the LALY Awards 2023

Doughty Street Chambers is delighted to announce that Antonia Benfield has been shortlisted as a finalist in the annual Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards 2023 in the category of ‘Legal Aid Barrister’.

The LALYs, organised by the Legal Aid Practitioners’ Group on a ‘not-for-profit basis’, are the only awards which celebrate the work of grassroots lawyers doing publicly-funded work. 

Antonia works across the fields of immigration, community care and public law with a particular focus on asylum claims and claims involving migrant children.  She regularly works on challenges to Government asylum policy including around the detention and assessment of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. She has been instructed on a number of country guidance cases, setting the protection framework for asylum seekers in the UK from Eritrea and Sri Lanka. She regularly works in partnership and represents NGOs seeking to achieve strategic change in the asylum system.

Antonia was appointed as Counsel to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), on the Children outside the UK (Phase 2) and Child Sexual Exploitation by Organised Networks investigations from 2018 to 2022.  Prior to joining the Bar, Antonia worked at for NGOs including the Refugee Council and has spent over 17 years working in support of refugee and migrant rights. She is a member of Lawyers Against Poverty and is a trustee of West London Welcome, a charity working to support refugee and migrant members of the community in west London.

Antonia will join the finalists at the 21st Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year awards taking place in central London on 12 July 2023.

Read more about Antonia’s practice here.

The full shortlist of finalists in all award categories can be found here.