Craig Rajgopaul KC – Blackstone Chambers, London

Craig Rajgopaul KC, who took silk in March 2024 having been called to the Bar in November 2010, specialises in employment and partnership law, with a complementary practice in commercial law. He previously practised as a solicitor-advocate with two leading City firms, Ashurst and then McDermott, Will and Emery. Craig has a wide-ranging employment and partnership practice spanning High Court, Employment Tribunal and appellate work, with additional expertise in the business protection sphere, notably in cases involving allegations of a breach of fiduciary duty and shareholder disputes. He has been involved in many of the most high-profile team move and restrictive covenant cases. He is regularly instructed in difficult discrimination and whistleblowing claims.

Craig’s Dad emigrated to the UK from India on his own as a sixteen-year-old, settling in Edinburgh, where Craig grew up.  His Dad attended Strathclyde University which enabled him to fulfil his ambition to become an electrical engineer, going on to make a successful career in the Oil and Gas Industry. Craig’s Mum, who is of Scottish heritage, grew up on an Edinburgh council estate and was the first in her family to attend university, taking a Bachelor of Education degree and having a career in teaching.  Craig’s Mum and Dad were childhood sweethearts, first meeting at a youth club. His parents’ hard work enabled Craig and his brother to enjoy a “nice middle-class life”, although, Craig added, “they were never flush with money” with his parents making a lot of personal sacrifices in order to give their sons a private secondary education in Edinburgh.

After school, Craig attended Keble College, Oxford University, graduating in 2000 with first class honours in Modern History. He then spent two years on the graduate Japanese Exchange and teaching (JET) programme, teaching children in Japan.  Halfway through his second year he decided to set his sights on a career in the law, encouraged by some other British JET participants who considered he was cut-out for such a career.  Craig successfully applied for Ashurst (the global legal firm)’s graduate programme, receiving £10,000 from the firm in order to fund the one-year post-graduate legal conversion course, at BPP in London.  Halfway through the course, Craig realised, belatedly, that he really wanted to become an advocate and should have, in hindsight, applied for a pupillage at the Bar, but could not afford to pay back the generous funding he received from Ashurst. His first seat as a trainee was in structure finance, which did not suit him at all, and he even toyed with giving up the law and moving back into teaching. However, his second seat was in employment law, which he loved – the combination of ever changing and challenging law, with real people and real problems.  He decided to combine both advocacy and employment law through becoming a solicitor-advocate with higher rights of audience in the same year he qualified (2007).

After a year and a half PQE he moved to McDermott, Will & Emery with the intention to do more advocacy.  However, he quickly became involved with Tullett Prebon v BGC Brokers, to date still the biggest team move case to have been litigated through to full trial.  With a 45-day high court trial (and subsequent appeal to the Court of Appeal) involving teams of Silks and juniors, there was no opportunity for him to practice oral advocacy.  Having worked incredibly hard on the case for over two years, McDermotts were speaking to him about becoming their next employment partner, and he thought that maybe he should pursue that challenge and then move to the Bar with the partnership ‘pips on his shoulder’.  However, his instructed junior (Jonathan Cohen – now KC) suggested that if he took partnership, he would likely never leave, and that he should move to the Bar then.

Craig applied successfully to Littleton Chambers and (as a solicitor-advocate) only had to do a truncated pupillage of four months before being offered tenancy.  “This was a lovely way into the Bar”, said Craig, as he never had to be a ‘baby barrister’ given his previous level of experience and contacts from being a solicitor.  He was soon involved in some of the biggest cases, including another major team move case (QBE v Dymoke) and large-scale whistleblowing and discrimination cases. Those areas became the key limbs of Craig’s practice.  He thoroughly enjoyed his time at Littleton Chambers but after ten years was approached by another set and, after much soul-searching, made the switch to Blackstone Chambers. One important consideration had been whether the switch would delay him being in a strong position to apply for King’s Counsel as some suggested might be the case, perhaps delaying the bid for silk by three years or more.

The switch of sets happened during the first year of the Covid pandemic, in July 2020, and Craig was soon working on major whistleblowing, discrimination and employee competition cases.  After a year settling in at the new set on such cases, Craig spoke to the Clerks about his applying for silk and was encouraged to do so within the next couple of years.  The existing employment silks in chambers were incredibly supportive of his application.  Silk was something he had always aspired to, at the appropriate time.  The actual spur to making an application was a substantial 6-week whistleblowing trial in late 2021 in which Craig cross-examined twenty-eight witnesses, leading a junior.

The application process took up a great deal of Craig’s time, all-told he calculated that he spent some seventy hours, including in contacting potential assessors and ensuring that he had the necessary cases of substance as defined in the application process to make a credible application. Craig had a coach, and he also spoke to a couple of Chambers’ silks about his application. Craig had no difficulties with the non-legal competencies, diversity and working with others as they were ingrained into how he was as a person both inside and outside the workplace.   In addition to his lived experience as a gay, mixed-race barrister, he was able to cite his long-standing interest in and experience of education law as it related to special educational needs. He has been a Representative for Independent Parental Special Education Advice (IPSEA) for over twenty years and had appeared for numerous parents in successful appeals to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (now the First Tier Tribunal). For a similar period, Craig had also been a school governor, so he had first-hand experience of the application of education law in schools. As a school governor of a state primary school in Wandsworth for the past ten years, he has helped to turn a school in special measures into one which received an Outstanding grade from OFSTED in its most recent inspection. Craig has also worked with autistic children for more than 15 years and taught in a special needs school in Japan.

In preparing for the KC interview, Craig did a couple of practice interviews and carefully re-read his application form, thinking about the sorts of questions his practice and cases could suggest to the interview panel.  He came out of the interview thinking it had gone quite well but then followed the wait to learn whether or not he had been recommended for silk, during which he spent a lot of time second-guessing what he had said at the interview. The whole application process was highly demanding, and it was a rather unsettling year, not least because he was conscious of people judging him and not knowing what they were saying.

Craig received the good news from the KC Panel when he was on holiday, out on the barrier reef in Australia, a day never to be forgotten!   Craig said that the KC Ceremony was like being married all over again in terms of the joy of the day and being surrounded by colleagues, friends and family (including his Mum, Dad, husband, sister-in-law and beloved nephew).  Tristan Jones KC in his set was also appointed to silk on the same day and Craig said it was also lovely to share the day and all the chambers’ celebrations with him.