Maya Lester KC is recommended as a leading silk by the legal directories in six practice areas: Administrative & Public Law, Competition & European Law, Civil Liberties & Human Rights, Public International Law and Sanctions. She is the “star individual” for sanctions work, ranked in the ‘Chambers 100 UK Bar’ list, in Who’s Who as one of the world’s leading competition, trade, customs and international lawyers and as a ‘Thought Leader’ for Brexit. Her most recent cases include Synesis (first UK Sanctions Act appeal), Youssef (HRA challenge to the Sanctions Act), LTTE (terrorist proscriptions), Wightman (the ECJ case on the revocability of Brexit), Meta v Russian Federation (freedom of expression), acting for JP Morgan in the EURIBOR investigation, and for the MOL Group in its European Arrest Warrant EU litigation & international arbitrations. She is a member of the Bars of England & Ireland.

Maya has a particular expertise in the law relating to economic sanctions. As the directories put it, ranking her as a “star” individual” she is “Queen of the Sanctions Bar without a doubt” and “owns the world of sanctions”. She founded and co- writes europeansanctions.com, the leading online resource on sanctions, with over 12,000 followers worldwide, and has given evidence on sanctions to a number parliamentary committees. She represents and advises hundreds of companies, individuals and government departments before the European and English courts (including on the UK Sanctions Act, the EU Blocking Regulation, sanctions contract clauses and investigations) and has acted in most of the leading cases, including Kadi II, Youssef, VTB, Tay Za, Central Bank of Iran, Sabra, Al-Assaad, NITC and IRISL.

Maya’s leading cases include Kadi(II) v Council & Commission (the leading case on the relationship between UN Security Council resolutions & EU law), Youssef, R (Bancoult) v Secretary of State (the Chagos Islands judicial reviews in the UK and ECHR), Enron v EWS (the first competition follow-on trial in the UK), R v Goldshield (prosecuting cartels as conspiracy to defraud), Walker v Innospec (equality in civil partners’ pensions) & the Shambo judicial review (on bovine TB). She has appeared in numerous judicial reviews of regulatory decisions (eg FREENOW, Cityhook, UniChem), competition appeals (including on EURIBOR, Pay TV, horseracing, dairy, and construction recruitment), competition directors’ disqualification cases, PCA, ICSID & UNCITRAL arbitrations, and appears several times a year in the European Court of Justice and General Court.

Maya was a founder of the Human Rights Lawyers Association and undertakes regular pro bono and public interest work; she is on the legal panel of Law for Change which funds public interest litigation. There is a strong US and international element to her practice; she spent three years as a Visiting Scholar & Master of Studies in Law at Yale and Columbia Law Schools. She is a regular speaker for the American Society for International Law, Chatham House, Justice, Public Law Project, Hart, C5, ALBA, the ABA Antitrust Spring Meeting, BIICL, ACAMS, International Bar Association, Bar European Group and World ECR.