A member of a Law Society committee tasked with promoting inclusion in the legal profession and celebrating the achievements of women solicitors has been promoted to the High Court bench.
The judiciary today announced that Margaret Obi, a member of the Society's women solicitors network committee, has been appointed a High Court judge. Assigned to the King's Bench Division, Obi will be known as The Honourable Ms Justice Obi.
According to official data, seven High Court judges in post on 1 April 2025 were solicitors; 100 judges in post were barristers.
Obi attended state school before studying law at university. She qualified as a solicitor in 1998, specialising in criminal defence work, and became a partner at her firm in 2002. She left private practice in 2014 to develop her career as an independent legal adviser. Her CV also includes deputy chair of the Financial Conduct Authority’s decisions committee, the first Service Police Complaints Commissioner and a House of Lords standards commissioner.
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Obi was appointed a deputy High Court judge in 2018. She became an acting judge of the Supreme Court of the British Indian Ocean Territory in 2023. Her ruling that Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers were unlawfully detained for three years on the remote island of Diego Garcia was widely covered in the press. Last year, she was appointed a judge of the upper tribunal (immigration and asylum chamber) and chair of the Competition Appeal Tribunal.
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