Pupils

Dejan Mladenovic

Dejan grew up in Streatham, South London. He completed his undergraduate LLB course at the University of Southampton. He then undertook an 8 month unremunerated internship at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, The Netherlands where he worked on the Milosevic trial under Sir Geoffrey Nice QC.
Dejan then commenced a further internship with ‘ Amicus Assisting Lawyers for Justice on Death Row.' He was assigned to Hocker, Morrow & Sterling Attorneys in Houston, Texas where he spent 9 months working on capital murder trials and appeals against the imposition of the death penalty.

Although the Amicus internship was unfunded, Dejan received a £5,000 International Human Rights Law scholarship from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Human Rights policy department to investigate and draft a research paper on the exercise of executive discretion by the Governor of Texas and the Texas Parole Board when considering the commutation of a death sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Dejan was awarded the Amicus ‘intern of the year' award by Michael Mansfield QC and Sister Helen Prejean (Author of the novel ‘Dead Man Walking') for his work on death row with Amicus.

Dejan then undertook a MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Lady Margaret Hall college, University of Oxford before finally undertaking the Bar Vocational Course at the Inns of Court School of Law. He was awarded an Exhibition Award by the Inner Temple and is a Prince of Wales Scholar.

Prior to joining Tooks Chambers, Dejan was in-house counsel at Kaim Todner Solicitors where he gained substantial Crown Court trial experience in s18 and s20 assaults, firearms offences, supplying drugs, violent disorder and money laundering. Dejan has also defended Army and Naval officers in several court martial trials in England and Germany. He also has experience in extradition proceedings in the Magistrates' court and on appeal to the Divisional court.

Naomi Lumsdaine

Prior to pupillage, Naomi was the Community Care Caseworker at the Prisoners’ Advice Service. In this role, she specialised in taking legal action on behalf of prisoners in cases involving community care, discrimination, access to healthcare, mental health, parole and compassionate release issues. Successes included gaining the provision of professional care support three times a day for a severely disabled life sentence prisoner in closed conditions. She conducted advice clinics within prisons and regularly represented prisoners at independent adjudications.

Having previously worked as a caseworker for the charity INQUEST, Naomi also has extensive knowledge of the investigative processes and law concerning inquests into deaths in custody.

Naomi is a member of the Inquest Lawyers Group and the Human Rights Lawyers Association. Her commitment to social justice is reflected in a history of campaigning and voluntary work for organisations such as Medical Justice, International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee and Young Legal Aid Lawyers.

Following graduation Naomi spent eight years in Australia where she became a television producer/director for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation before returning to England and embarking on a legal career. Her filming work has taken her around the world from South Korea to the Amazon.

Bijan Hoshi

Bijan's long-standing commitment to protecting human rights is illustrated by a history of volunteering for legal and quasi-legal civil society organisations. He has served as secretary of the University of Glasgow Colombia Solidarity Campaign; legal intern at the Glasgow Ethnic Minorities Law Centre and at the Kurdish Human Rights Project; volunteer for Liberty and Reprieve; and as a visitor of detainees at the Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre with the organisation Scottish Detainee Visitors. Work with vulnerable and disenfranchised members of society made Bijan determined to become a barrister so that he could make a positive contribution to social justice.

Before coming to the Bar, Bijan worked in international development in South-East Asia. At the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, Phnom Penh, he was a member of the Business and Human Rights team, and was responsible for an advocacy campaign designed to improve awareness of and commitment to human rights in the Cambodian private sector. As a law and information analyst for the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in Vientiane, Lao PDR, Bijan undertook an analysis of legal issues pertaining to human trafficking in Lao PDR, South-East Asia and globally.

Bijan was awarded a 1st class history degree by the University of Glasgow in 2006. He won two prizes, graduating in first place in the History Department and receiving the highest mark among the male graduates of the Faculty of Arts. Bijan was awarded the BPP Senior Academic's Scholarship to undertake the Graduate Diploma in Law at BPP Law School; an Arts and Humanities Research Council scholarship to undertake an LLM in Human Rights Law at the University of London; and the Inner Temple Princess Royal Scholarship to undertake the Barristers' Professional Training Course at City Law School.

Bijan is a member of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, Liberty and the Human Rights Lawyers Association, and he is an accredited employment representative for the Free Representation Unit. He enjoys cookery, modern literature and listening to music, and he still harbours the forlorn ambition of playing centre-forward for Stoke City Football Club.

Catherine Oborne

Catherine is completing her 12 month pupillage at Tooks Chambers.

Catherine's commitment to human rights law stems from her work in Zimbabwe. In 2008, Catherine volunteered for then opposition party MDC Senator and human rights lawyer, David Coltart. She has subsequently done two further stints with him in his new role as Minister of Education in 2010 and 2011. In Zimbabwe, she has worked on legal, educational and humanitarian projects, including the development of a policy for academy schools there.

Catherine has a keen interest in both civil and criminal law, and taught criminal law at undergraduate level at City University in 2010.

Catherine has a commitment to reaching out to vulnerable and disadvantaged people through her work. She has volunteered at the Cambridge House Law Centre in a deprived area of Camberwell. She has also volunteered for a number of legal charities, including Liberty, where she worked as a Legal Advice and Information volunteer and Reprieve, where she worked as a researcher on their secret prisons team.

Prior to pupillage, Catherine worked for the Ministry of Justice in a team developed to set up and support a panel to advise the Lord Chancellor on judicial diversity.

Catherine studied Theology and Religious Studies at Cambridge University from 2005 to 2008 and obtained a double first. At City University, she obtained a distinction in her GDL/CPE in 2010 and an outstanding in the BPTC in 2011.

Catherine was awarded a Princess Royal Scholarship from the Inner Temple in 2009 and a Major Scholarship in 2010.

Catherine is a member of the Human Rights Lawyers Association and Liberty.