Paul Turner

Paul is a qualified lawyer, a chartered member of the Institute of Legal Executives and accredited by the Law Society to Advanced level 3 of the Immigration and Asylum Accreditation Scheme. This accreditation has been awarded to a very small proportion of specialist immigration and asylum lawyers.

Paul joined Barnes Harrild & Dyer in 2002 and established the immigration asylum and human rights department. In 2003 Paul secured a Legal Aid contract to provide free immigration legal services to the community and has successfully supervised the firms legal aid contract work and its private client operations since. In 2009 Paul was achieved partner status and in September 2015 was promoted to senior partner. Paul is well known by his peers in the profession as being a leading practitioner and his hard work was acknowledged by Legal 500, which recognised him as one of five leading individuals in the South East UK region for immigration law. The 2017 edition quotes;

‘Barnes Harrild & Dyer is ‘a firm of dedicated and reliable solicitors, whose determination and confidence is exemplary’. The team regularly represents asylum applicants and victims of trafficking, and has a strong track record in handling cases before the Immigration Tribunal, through to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. Other areas of expertise include unlawful detention claims, Children’s Act and care proceedings and business immigration matters. The ‘friendly and trustworthy’ Paul Turner is the key practitioner, and is praised by clients for his ‘honest advice, proactive encouragement and drive to succeed’.

Paul is widely recommended to clients from all over the UK and abroad. Paul has worked on a substantial number of complex cases and his knowledge of the law and experience enables him to advise clearly and accurately achieving successful results in the most demanding of cases. Paul specialises in all areas of immigration asylum and human rights law and is experienced in performing work at all court levels up to the Supreme Court, but takes a particular interest in protecting those who have established family life in the UK, best interests of children, deportation of foreign criminals, European law, human rights and all matters of public law.

Paul is overall responsible for the successful development of the immigration law team. He is very active running a varied caseload of complex immigration cases. He is highly valued by the team for his supervisory skills and depth of legal knowledge. He is often called upon by his peers, such as counsel for his opinion. Mr Turner has also been instructed to provide expert opinions to the Family proceedings court concerning the impact of immigration matters in family and Children’s Act and Care proceeding matters and in criminal trials.

One of Paul’s most notable reported cases is R (on the application of Johnson) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) [2016] UKSC 56, a matter that concluded in the Supreme Court. It is a rare event for a firm to succeed on appeal to the Supreme Court and this examples Paul’s specialism.