Adam Smith

Practice Areas

• Crime
• Extradition
• Regulatory
• Immigration
• Judicial review

Adam has an extensive practice focused on criminal, extradition and public law.

Adam has a busy criminal practice appearing in the Magistrates’ Court, Crown Court and Court of Appeal. He both defends and prosecutes. Adam has represented clients charged with a variety of offences, including sexual offences, arson, violent offences and drug offences. His regular criminal practice has given him extensive exposure to new legal areas; a proving ground in which he has shown his ability to get to grips with difficult legal matters in a short space of time and communicate clear legal advice to his clients. Adam’s confident style of advocacy, combined with his impressive academic abilities, has led to highly commendable feedback from clients.

In extradition, Adam has dealt with a complex cases that have involved arguing human rights grounds, as well as technical legal arguments regarding the validity of extradition warrants. He has resisted a extradition from countries over Europe for a variety of serious criminal matters.

Adam is regularly instructed in civil matters in the Magistrates’ Court dealing with Police orders (Sexual Harm Prevention Orders, Domestic Violence Prevention Orders, etc). For these matters, Adam has effectively articulated technical arguments, including human rights arguments focused on proportionality.

Adam also practices in regulatory law, having acted for the Royal College of Nurses, Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Metropolitan Police Service in a variety of professional misconduct hearings.

Adam has a background in investigating human rights abuses in several high-profile matters; working with the Geoffrey Nice Foundation, he worked on a project assessing how to bring human rights abuses to an end in North Korea. This work involved detailed legal and factual research (considering the accounts of hundreds of North Korean defectors) as well as international advocacy, where the findings were presented to high-profile and international audiences in South Korea, Germany and Croatia. In this work, Adam extensively considered Universal Jurisdiction for such crimes. In addition to this work, Adam has previously worked on assisting victims of the conflict in Afghanistan, where he advised on potential methods for redress. This involved quickly researching legal options to develop clear and concise advice for clients.

In public law, Adam has both an extensive academic and practical background. Practically, Adam has worked in judicial reviews, most recently in relation to an action against the Department of Work and Pensions. In this, he used his experience in creating the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022, whilst he was working as a civil servant. This work involved setting up independent reviews of the Human Rights Act and Administrative Law. As such, Adam has a wealth of experience and knowledge of public law and human rights in the UK, and abroad.

Adam won an award for achieving the highest mark in public law and human rights module when studying law, which he built on to achieve a Distinction during his LLM.

Outside of work, Adam enjoys cooking, travelling and has a keen interest in performing improvised theatre, having taken several shows to the Edinburgh Fringe during his time at university.