Nora Nanayakkara

Nora Nanayakkara became a member of chambers in February 2025, following successful completion of her pupillage.

Overview

Called in 2024, Nora came to the Bar following a career in corporate governance and professional regulation.  She is developing a busy criminal practice as a trial advocate.

Crime 

Nora is regularly instructed in the Crown Court, Magistrates’ Court and Youth Court.  She has experience in allegations ranging from violent and sexual offences to drugs and dishonesty offences.

Nora has also represented clients in trademark infringement and planning enforcement matters. 

Often instructed to represent clients charged with road traffic offences, she has advanced technical arguments including special reasons and exceptional hardship to help clients retain their driving licences, including on appeal to the Crown Court.

She has undertaken specific training to represent children and young people and to conduct the cross-examination of vulnerable witnesses.

Regulatory

Before retraining as a criminal barrister, Nora was a Chair of fitness to practise panels at the General Dental Council (GDC), and General Osteopathic Council (GOsC) and served on the Regulatory Board at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). 

Having chaired hundreds of fitness to practise hearings, she understands how regulators present their cases and knows first-hand how panels approach their decision-making in interim and substantive fitness to practise cases.

Nora is keen to grow her regulatory practice and apply these insights in the representation of professionals facing regulatory proceedings.

Corporate Crime

Nora’s commercial awareness has been developed by her previous career in corporate governance and risk management, which included appointments to the Board of the UK Statistics Authority, where she chaired the Audit & Risk Committee, the Intellectual Property Office (the UK’s register of trademarks, copyright and designs) and Nominet (the .uk domain name registry).

She has represented clients in proceeds of crime proceedings.  During pupillage, she undertook research on the scope of POCA restraint orders and contributed to a webinar on corporate criminal offending.

Client Testimonials

“Nora is organised, methodical, meticulous in her preparation and very client friendly. She very quickly became our first choice for the most complicated cases; particularly those that had complex technical legal issues. Nora has demonstrated a willingness to go above and beyond and has repeatedly achieved fantastic results. Her ability to build a rapport with the client has led to compliments from clients and requests that she stay on their cases”.  Instructing solicitor

“Nora’s advice and assistance made a stressful situation a lot easier to handle.  I am grateful for the time and effort put into preparing my defence.” Lay client

“I instructed Ms Nanayakkara to represent a particularly vulnerable child defendant who had significant difficulties and Ms Nanayakkara drafted a very detailed advice for the expert psychologist. Ms Nanayakkara demonstrated considerable client care, taking the time to explain things to the child in a simplistic manner. Ms Nanayakkara represented this child at his Youth Court trial and robustly challenged the lawfulness of his detention and treatment and rigorously cross-examining prosecution witnesses. We were all delighted when this child was acquitted” Instructing solicitor

“Ms Nanayakkara is always reliable, well-prepared, and has shown continuous attention to detail, picking up on unexplored issues which altered the course of the trials to the benefit of the clients. We have been provided with positive feedback from clients both regarding the outcome of their matters, as well as how Ms Nanayakkara has personally interacted with them.” Instructing solicitor

Education

• Bar Vocational Studies: Inns of Court College of Advocacy (ICCA)
• Graduate Diploma in Law: University of Law
• Diploma Legal Medicine: Faculty of Forensic & Legal Medicine, Royal College of Physicians
• Masters Business Administration: University of Cologne
• BA (Hons) European Studies and German: University College Cork

Scholarships and Awards

• Baroness Hale of Richmond Scholarship
• David Karmel Scholarship

Professional Memberships

• The Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn 
• Criminal Bar Association (CBA)
• Women in Criminal Law (WICL)
• Association of Regulatory and Disciplinary Lawyers (ARDL)
• Young Fraud Lawyers’ Association (YFLA)
• London Irish Lawyers’ Association (LILA)

Languages

• German