Gavin Millar QC joined the Centre for Investigative Journalism Board in 2008. He is a practising barrister specialising in media, public and employment (and discrimination) law.
Gavin studied law at Oxford and was called to the Bar in 1981. He is a founder member of the leading human rights set, Doughty Street Chambers. He was a member of Westminster City Council from 1985 to 1994. He took silk in 2000. He sits as a Recorder of the Crown Court (2003).
Much of Gavin’s media work is for clients asserting free speech rights. He mainly undertakes defamation, privacy, contempt and reporting restriction cases. He acts for the BBC, Times, Guardian and other well-known UK media organisations, as well as many smaller publishers. He also often acts for American publishers when they are sued in the UK.
He represents individual journalists through the National Union of Journalists, and works closely with free speech NGOs such as Article 19, Index on Censorship, English PEN and the Media Legal Defence Initiative.
Gavin is co-author of Media Law and Human Rights (2009 Oxford University Press). He is a Council of Europe expert on freedom of expression. In this capacity he regularly speaks and advises on media law at Strasbourg and in the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe.