Practice Summary
Sappho Dias has been in practice since 1982 following pupillage in a civil-commercial set, before joining a mixed civil/crime set where she undertook disciplinary and regulatory cases defending professionals. Sappho is experienced in the areas of Planning Law and Local Government Law (Advisory work as well as Judicial Review in Adult Social Care cases). She has been recently involved in a number of Court of Protection cases.
Sappho is especially experienced in Election Law, having been retained by the Electoral Commission in respect of the Scottish Referendum. Sappho was also retained by six different local authorities in respect of the General Election to advise Returning Officers. She has been involved in a number of election cases representing the Returning Officers from different local authorities.
She has experience in substantial criminal cases and was involved defending in a money laundering case which in opening was described as the biggest money laundering case ever prosecuted. In more recent times Sappho has been retained by the SFO and disparate solicitors as independent counsel on issues to do with legal profesional privilege. In 2007 Sappho added to the scope of her practice and began to represent political prisoners in Burma (Myanmar) before international tribunals including many well known pro-democracy political activists such as the 88 Generation leaders Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi, as well as five of the journalists who worked for the Democratic Voice of Burma.
Sappho Dias is a trained advocacy teacher and taught on the South Eastern Circuit Advanced Advocacy Course at Oxford for 18 years and she has also been part of the UK’s delegation of advocacy trainers in the USA, South Africa, Botswana and Pakistan. She has written and published articles in human rights, and regulatory law, as well as writing complex case studies for advanced advocacy training. In 2009 she was invited to give the guest lecture for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Legal Studies at its annual conference in Cambridge – “Burma, Tragedy Law and Hope”.
Sappho now has a wide practice which extends from International, Human Rights and Constitutional Law matters to domestic matters involving Local Government, Election Law, Planning Law and Immigration Law, where she has represented the Secretary of State for the Home Department.
She has also had a background in cases which involved sexual misconduct, both in the criminal and civil context.
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