Anna Poole

Anna Poole QC is a Senator of the College of Justice in Scotland. Prior to her appointment, she was a Judge of the Upper Tribunal, Administrative Appeals Chamber. Lady Poole was educated at Madras College, St Andrews, and at Somerville College, Oxford.

Lady Poole graduated with first class honours from Oxford for Law in 1991. She first practiced as a solicitor in London before returning to Scotland, where she made her name as an expert in administrative law. She was appointed as a Standing Junior to the Scottish Government in 2002, was made Second Standing Junior in 2009, and First Standing Junior Counsel in 2010, making her the Government's first choice junior counsel in matters of constitutional or administrative importance. In 2012, she took silk, becoming Queen's Counsel.

In 2014 she was appointed as a part-time First tier Tribunal Judge in the Social Entitlement Chamber and she was elevated to a salaried judge of the Upper Tribunal in 2018.

In addition to her legal career, Lady Poole worked at the Universities of Dundee and Edinburgh as a research assistant and a tutor respectively, and serves as Chancellor for the Diocese of Edinburgh. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, after completing a course in arbitration at the University of Aberdeen.

Lady Poole was formally installed at a ceremony in Parliament House on 10 January 2020. She is a co-author of a book on judicial review with Sheriff Frances McCartney and Lorna Drummond QC (A Practical Guide to Public Law Litigation in Scotland Drummond et al., 2019) and is a contributor to Court of Session Practice edited by Lord Donald MacFadyen