Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC is from Ireland and holds degrees from University College Dublin (UCD) and the Honorable Society of the King's Inns, as well as from Cambridge University. She has been practising from Doughty Street Chambers since 2005. In her 18 years at Doughty Street she has acted in many leading human rights, public law and media law cases, both in the UK and internationally. This includes acting for bereaved families of the 7/7 London Bombings and the Hillsborough Disaster, and in a series of cases which have changed the law on the rights of children in police custody. She is a world expert on accountability for crimes against journalists and journalists' safety, and has led the international legal teams in a series of key cases in this field, including for the bereaved family of Daphne Caruana Galizia, assassinated in Malta in 2017; for pro-democracy campaigner and publisher Jimmy Lai, imprisoned in Hong Kong; and (jointly with Amal Clooney) for Maria Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate from the Philippines. 

Caoilfhionn has acted in a number of cases concerning the rights of the Irish in Britain and in complex cases concerning cross-border issues between Ireland and Britain. She led the legal team acting for the family of Margaret Keane, overturning a ruling preventing them from using an Irish only inscription on her gravestone. She has recently been appointed Ireland’s Special Rapporteur on Child Protection; is a Commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission; and she is an Adjunct Full Professor at UCD. She was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2017 for her “outstanding commitment to enabling the Human Rights Act’s protections.”