Hon. Geoffrey Vos

Sir Geoffrey Charles Vos (born 22 April 1955) is a judge in England and Wales. Since January 2021, he has held the positions of Master of the Rolls and the Head of Civil Justice in England and Wales.[1] Vos was called to the bar at Inner Temple in 1977, and practised in commercial and chancery litigation, both domestically and internationally. He took silk in 1993 and served as chair of the Chancery Bar Association from 1999 to 2001 and as chair of the Bar Council in 2007. Sir Geoffrey began his judicial career with appointment as a deputy High Court Judge in 1999. Having sat in the Courts of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey between 2005 and 2009, and in the Court of Appeal of the Cayman Islands between 2008 and 2009, he was appointed as a High Court Judge in October 2009.[4] He sat as a Deputy High Court Judge from 1999 until 2009 and was appointed as a Justice of the High Court, assigned to the Chancery Division, in October 2009. He was appointed as a Lord Justice of Appeal in 2013. He was President of the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary between 2014 and June 2016. He became Chancellor of the High Court on 24 October 2016. Sir Geoffrey Vos was appointed the Master of the Rolls and Head of Civil Justice in England and Wales on 11 January 2021, succeeding Sir Terence Etherton.[5] In addition to being President of the Court of Appeal's Civil Division, the Master of the Rolls is chair of both the Civil Justice Council and the Civil Procedure Rule Committee. He is chair of the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives and of the Forum on Historical Manuscripts and Academic Research.[6] He is also a member of the LawtechUK Panel and chair of its UK Jurisdiction Taskforce.[7]In March 2021, Sir Geoffrey disclosed that the Civil Justice Council was "looking at the extent to which litigants should be forced to mediate and if so, in what circumstances". He admitted the idea is "highly controversial".[8] In April 2021, he called for a greater use of digital technology to accelerate the dispute resolution process.[9] In May 2021, he outlined his vision for digital justice reform in more detail, and the need to reform the overall system, rather than focusing only on the judicial decision-making process. Emphasising the need to focus on the whole picture, he said: "We should not allow the tail, however waggy, to wag the huge dispute resolution dog".[10]