Nicholas Bull

Nicholas Bull — Year of Call: 2004

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E: n.bull@15oldbaileychambers.com

Degree: LLB (Hons) 2:1 Uni­ver­sity of Liv­er­pool, LLM (Merit) Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don, Bar Voca­tional Course BPP Law School

Nicholas prin­ci­pally under­takes crim­i­nal lit­i­ga­tion (both defence and pros­e­cu­tion) and has a spe­cial­ism in reg­u­la­tory offences and com­plex fraud. He has par­tic­u­lar exper­tise relat­ing to the use of dig­i­tal evi­dence, cases involv­ing multi-jurisdictions, plea nego­ti­a­tions, inves­ti­ga­tory pow­ers, dis­clo­sure oblig­a­tions, restraint/confiscation and abuse of process. Nicholas also under­takes work in front of other tri­bunals includ­ing the Parole Board and Traf­fic Com­mis­sion­ers. Nicholas is able to under­take direct access work includ­ing advice on restraint prior to charge.

Key strengths of his have been high­lighted by those who have briefed him are his tena­cious advo­cacy and abil­ity to work under pres­sure, knowl­edge of com­puter sys­tems, abil­ity to grasp and han­dle large vol­umes of doc­u­ments and dis­til from those essen­tial arguments.

He is a Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice ‘Grade 3′ panel mem­ber and a ‘C’ panel coun­sel to the Seri­ous Fraud Office. Reg­u­la­tory work under­taken includes act­ing for a num­ber of local author­i­ties. Work under­taken has includ­ed pros­e­cut­ing both ben­e­fit fraud and for trad­ing stan­dards, advis­ing on the use of pow­ers under Reg­u­la­tion of Inves­ti­ga­tory Pow­ers Act 2000, and the appli­ca­tion for Anti-Social Behav­iour Orders.

Mem­ber­ships

Fraud Advi­sory Panel
Crim­i­nal Bar Association

Appel­lant work:

R v Ansari (2012) (Court of Appeal) Suc­cess­ful response to an appeal against imme­di­ate cus­to­dial sen­tence imposed for false doc­u­ment and bank­ruptcy offences.
R v Coyle (2011) (Court of Appeal) Appeal against con­vic­tion that judge showed bias in his sum­ming up in rela­tion to duress.
R v Nim­ley (2010) (Court of Appeal) Appeal against a term of impris­on­ment for a per­son caught video­ing in a cin­ema and upload­ing the video to a file trans­fer web­site, the sen­tence was reduced from impris­on­ment to unpaid work.
R v Lynch (2009) (Court of Appeal) Appeal against the judge’s sum­ming up in bind­ing the jury by direct­ing that they should ignore bad faith in rela­tion to actions of the police dur­ing evi­den­tial gath­er­ing. This resulted in a quashed conviction.

Exam­ples of recent defence work:

R v JM and oth­ers (2011) Hung jury in rela­tion to case of vio­lent dis­or­der with client alleged involved in riots, cur­rently await­ing re-trial.
R v Sodha (2011) Crown offered no evi­dence fol­low­ing expert advice and sub­mis­sions despite defendant’s fin­ger­print being on a glove found at the scene of the bur­glary.
R v Tejan (2011) Defen­dant acquit­ted of s.18 OAPA, con­victed of s.20 OAPA where two police offi­cers were knifed and jaw dis­lo­cated in two places respec­tively
R v El-Maghrebi (2011) Led case where upon suc­cess­ful sub­mis­sions and defendant’s absence con­fis­ca­tion amount reduced from £1.8m to £400,000
R v JW (2011) Client charged with rape of a 12 year old, fol­low­ing request for dis­clo­sure pros­e­cu­tion with­drew need for ‘new­ton hear­ing’ deal­ing with con­sent, client received a com­mu­nity penalty.

Exam­ples of recent pros­e­cu­tion work:

R v Lawrence ands oth­ers (2011) Briefed for three years as sec­ond junior on the Seri­ous Fraud Office ‘SFO’ case ‘BMF01’ a series of mort­gage frauds totalling approx­i­mately £50million; respon­si­bil­ity for dis­clo­sure and exhibit man­age­ment.
R v Car­rara and oth­ers (2011) Suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of three-handed affray case and sub­se­quent suc­cess­ful appli­ca­tion for foot­ball ban­ning orders
R v Oliver Richard­son and oth­ers (2010) Suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of four indi­vid­u­als in a two week trial involv­ing the sup­ply­ing of drugs from south-west Lon­don to the sur­rey area
R v Bog­gins (2010) Suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of a cannabis fac­tory owner despite the loss of exhibits that had ini­tially been used to link the owner to the house.

Other notable work:

R v Nicholas Lev­ene (2012), Briefed as dis­clo­sure coun­sel on the Seri­ous Fraud Office ‘SFO’ case ‘BND01’ a £250m ponzi fraud.
Inde­pen­dent legal coun­sel in the pro­ceeds of crime search in the SFO case ‘OSR01’. A search that was required sig­nif­i­cant care as it was one of the first to be under­taken post-charge and before trial. Care was required to pre­serve integrity of doc­u­ments that were between the defen­dants and and their legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the forth­com­ing trial.
SFO case ‘PWS01’ as inde­pen­dent legal coun­sel con­sid­er­ing pro­fes­sional legal priv­i­lege. This case involvds a British com­pany and alleged for­eign cor­rup­tion; Nicholas was briefed to resolve priv­i­lege claims with the defence rep­re­sen­ta­tives.
SFO case ‘KTG01’, briefed as dis­clo­sure coun­sel and pro­vided lit­i­ga­tion sup­port in the lead up to trial by inter­view­ing, obtain­ing and draft­ing wit­ness state­ments. Nicholas also advised on response to the var­i­ous dis­clo­sure requests and the var­i­ous mat­ters that rose in the defence con­tention as to abuses of process. This case required knowl­edge of liq­ui­da­tion and com­pany law as it was essen­tially a pre­ferred cred­i­tor fraud.
Took part in the high pro­file search of De Law Rue Secu­rity ‘DLR01’ as inde­pen­dent coun­sel advis­ing on legal pro­fes­sional priv­i­lege for one of the three search sites.
SFO Sec­ond­ment work­ing on the case of R v Adam Hauxwell-Smith and Oth­ers ‘GWL01’ as dis­clo­sure assis­tant sec­onded full time within the SFO. Work cov­ered review­ing unused mate­r­ial, detail­ing CPIA sched­ules and assist­ing both briefed coun­sel and SFO lawyers in the prepa­ra­tion for trial, par­tic­u­larly by respond­ing to s.8 requests and help­ing write the pros­e­cu­tion response to the var­i­ous abuse arguments made.

Pub­lished Articles

In (2010) 174 CL&J 169 and (2010) 174 CL&J 389. These arti­cles cov­ered R v Innospec Ltd [2010] EW Misc 7 and R v Dougall [2010] EWCA Crim 1048. I con­trasted the approach taken in this juris­dic­tion and that in the United States where I have worked on a 3 month sec­ond­ment mak­ing prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions as to changes that might be implemented.

Plea Nego­ti­a­tion 1
Plea Nego­ti­a­tion 2