Andrew Popplewell, QC, who has been a member of the Guild of St Bride since 1994, has been appointed a justice of the High Court, assigned to the Queen's Bench Division, which is one of the three main divisions within the system - the others being the Chancery and Family Divisions.
Andrew's career within the legal profession began in 1982 at Brick Court Chambers, within a stone's throw of St Bride'. He worked closely under Bob Alexander QC and Nicholas Phillips QC (now Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, a Judge at the Supreme Court.)
He was involved in many aspects of civil cases with increasing bias towards commercial work - especially shipping. He then followed, as he puts it, 'a wider diet of general commercial work including banking insurance energy etc.'
He was only 38 when he took silk in 1997. He was appointed a recorder in 2002 and a deputy High Court Judge in 2008. He has handled a number of cases in exotic jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands and The Bahamas, and one in the Seychelles,' all of which' he remarks ' sound sexier than the reality of trying to work in primitive surroundings in the sapping heat'!
Andrew's wife was invested in the guild in 1999, and she is a former church warden.
