Tom studied law at Oxford where he was awarded a first in the BA in 1987 and a BCL in 1988. He was called to the Bar in 1989, having been awarded a Council of Legal Education Studentship and the Prince of Wales Scholarship in 1988, and the Karmel Scholarship (Common Law) First Prize and the Atkin Scholarship at Gray's Inn in 1989.

He was appointed to the Attorney General's Treasury "A" Panel in 2003 and in 2005 was appointed as a Recorder.  He was also awarded Employment Junior of the Year in the Chambers & Partners Bar Awards in 2005 and again in 2006. He took silk in 2006.

Tom does the full range of employment law work and is proud of acting for a wide spectrum of clients, from refuse collectors to Chief Executives and from trade unions to small businesses to multinational corporations to government departments. A lot of his work is in the High Court or at the appellate level, but he also appears in employment tribunal cases where the claim is substantial or raises issues of law. He does a great deal of work in the areas which intersect with commercial law, such as city bonus cases, restraint of trade and breach of confidence. A lot of his work concerns the EU aspects of employment law, and he also has valuable experience of collective labour law (trade union law, industrial action, recognition and collective bargaining). Since 2000, he has had more reported cases in the Industrial Relations Law Reports than any other practitioner in the field.

His discrimination law work cuts across employment, goods and services and education. It covers sex, race and disability discrimination as well as trade union and health and safety victimisation cases, but he has a particular interest in equal pay law, age and religion and belief discrimination. He appears in a number of the high value City cases and acted for Merrill Lynch in its successful defence of a £7.5m sex discrimination/equal pay claim brought by Stephanie Villalba. He also acted for BNP Paribas in its successful defence of a maternity discrimination claim brought by Katharina Tofeji and for HSBC Bank in its defence of a high-profile sexual orientation claim brought by its former Head of Equity Trading. Tom is also frequently instructed by public bodies and government departments.

As far as public/local government work is concerned, he was a member of the A Panel of Treasury Counsel until he took silk. He has considerable experience of acting both for and against local and central government mainly in the context of education, the NHS and the Prison Service.

Tom’s cases often raise European Union/human rights points and he has argued a number of cases in the European Court of Justice. By way of recent examples, he appeared in the ECJ on behalf of the UK Government in the Robinson-Steele, Marshalls Clay and FNV v The Netherlands cases which raise, under Article 7 of the Working Time Directive, various issues in relation to the right to annual paid leave.

His sports law practice tends to overlap with the other areas of his work. It involves commercial/employment disputes between sports players, their agents and sports organisations. Tom has experience of sports disciplinary work, having appeared in a number of doping cases including some of the so called Nandrolone cases in athletics. He also successfully defended Liverpool Football Club against a challenge to the disabled seating arrangements at Anfield brought by a disabled Birmingham City supporter.

For details of Thomas Linden QC's case law practice, please see Notable Cases.

For a printable version (.pdf) of Thomas Linden QC's CV, please download from here.

If you would like any further information regarding Thomas Linden QC's practice, please contact his Practice Team, or call +44 (0)20 7404 3447.