Judith Bourne is Dean of CILEX Law School. She is an experienced HE leader, having previously led Law Schools at St. Mary’s University and the University of Roehampton.

Judith practised as a barrister and later worked as a legal advisor to Magistrates’ before moving to full time academia in 1999. As a first generation graduate she is committed to the use of education as an aid to social mobility, but also values knowledge for its own sake; she is passionate about legal education.

With nearly 30-years of HE teaching in Land Law and Equity and Trusts Law, Judith views teaching as a privilege which hands over knowledge to the next generation. She became a Professor in 2021 and is a SFHEA. Judith continues to act as an external examiner for other universities and supervises Ph.D. students.

Judith has published widely, her research has focused on the 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act and how it finally enabled women to become lawyers. Her current research commitments include: editor of the Research Handbook on Gender and the Legal Profession (Edward Elgar Publishers, to be published early 2025); editor of a special edition of the Women’s History Review on first ethnically diverse women lawyers (to be published Dec 2024); also in progress is Bourne, J and Morris, C.  Early Women Solicitors in the UK and Ireland: The Struggle for Equality (EUP); and to be published is a chapter in a pedagogy volume for St. Mary’s University Press, ‘Towards a more relational and inclusive law degree: The need to teach legal history within the Law School’.

Judith is an associate member of Normanton Chambers and an Academic Bencher of Honorable Society of the Inner Temple (she is a member of Lincoln’s Inn). She worked with all 4 Inns of Court for their 2019 centenary celebrations of women into the entry to the legal profession and two of those exhibitions continue today: https://www.innertemple.org.uk/women-in-law/introduction/ and https://www.innertemple.org.uk/celebrating-diversity-at-the-bar/introduction/  

Judith sits on the Law Society’s Learning and Development steering group (Our new learning and development steering group and faculty | The Law Society) She has also contributed towards the Law Gazette.

She believes that the CILEX route to qualification is essential for a more representative legal profession, as well as a way of improving access to justice and that CPQ is a more inclusive way of assessing future lawyers.