Expertise

Sue has a broad spectrum of public and human rights law expertise, covering discrimination and equality cases, EU law, Humans Rights Act claims, public sector service cuts, healthcare, planning and environmental, migrant support and immigration detention. Her past and current public law work includes challenges to reductions in public services in a broad range of areas: from care home closures to a Law Centre funding cut. She works with patients to ensure access to NHS treatment, such as mentally ill or transgendered clients. She has experience of challenging major planning decisions which exclude affordable housing or have a potential adverse environmental effect, or where equality duties have not been complied with. She has secured the release of a number of foreign national prisoners unlawfully detained, e.g. due to their psychiatric conditions. Across a variety of public law cases, she has challenged delays in decision-making by public bodies, particularly the Home Office, and represented clients seeking access to information, particularly medical or environmental information.

Sue established Pierce Glynn's public law and human rights law team, which has a growing reputation, reflected in the latest Legal 500 and Chambers Directory rankings. Sue is top ranked for social housing in the Chambers 2010 directory. She is a leading individual for both civil liberties and human rights where "sources admire her willingness to take a risk in areas where the case law is underdeveloped", and for administrative and public law. Sue is also recommended in the Legal 500 directory for administrative and public law, civil liberties and human rights and healthcare law.

In June 2011, Sue returned from a sabbatical year at Georgetown University in Washington DC, with a Thomas Bradbury Chetwood award for achieving a distinction and the highest academic average in the International Legal Studies LLM. In the U.S, she focussed on international environmental law and corporate accountability, conducting research for non-profit organisations: Earthjustice, Human Rights First; and the Center for International Environmental Law.

Sue is also renowned for promoting adequate welfare provision for migrants, including EU nationals. In 2007 she won 'Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year' in the immigration category for this work. She is the lead author of the standard legal text on the subject, currently, Support for Asylum Seekers and other Migrants, 2009 (LAG). She has written widely about issues affecting people from abroad and has written a regular updating column on this area of the law for Legal Action magazine since 2001. She also writes regularly about social justice and human rights issues. She has provided training for national organisations and spoken on a variety of platforms about this difficult and controversial area of the law. She is Chair of the Asylum Support Appeals Project and works closely with the Eastern European Roma Community . In 2006 she was appointed as a specialist adviser to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights for their Inquiry into the treatment of asylum-seekers. In 2009 Pierce Glynn began work with London Detainee Support Group on a litigation project aimed at reducing arbitrary detention.

In 2008 Sue took part in a Law Society delegation to investigate human rights violations in Colombia; she has remained active in the Colombia Caravana campaign group.

Whilst Sue now concentrates on her public law and human rights work, she has extensive experience in social welfare lawyer and continues to act in a small number of more complex social welfare law cases, particularly those with overlap with her public law and human rights expertise or work with groups. For example, Sue is currently representing a group of squatters in the European Court of Human Rights, relying on Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention. She has successfully used public sector equality duty arguments to resolve a number of housing and community care cases involving disabled clients.