Masters of the Bench

John Leslie was educated at Dover College (of which he has been a Governor since 1974) and Clare College, Cambridge; he was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1965, called to the Bar in 1969 and elected a Bencher in 2002. At the Bar he had a General Common Law practice based in London, refining latterly to personal injury and clinical negligence. From 1992 he sat as a deputy Queen’s Bench Master and was appointed to the full time position as in 1996 and retires in 2016. He was a member of the original Civil Procedure Rule Committee under Lord Woolf. He has been an editor of the Civil Court Practice (“The Green Book”) since 1999 and is an editor of various volumes of Atkin’s Court Forms. From 1999 until 2015 he was a course tutor at the Judicial Studies Board – now the Judicial College – and has helped with Middle Temple Advocacy since 1996. His interests include France and French, bridge and woodworking.