Lily Parrott

I am a Solicitor in the Public Law department at Duncan Lewis, specialising in the intersection of immigration/asylum, public, and human rights law. I lead a small team of caseworkers under the direction of Toufique Hossain. Since joining the team in March 2019, I have gained significant experience supporting vulnerable clients, including those in detention, suffering from complex physical and/or mental health issues, and victims of torture, sexual violence and trafficking. In doing this, I have developed a reputation for being caring and dedicated to vulnerable clients while maintaining high-quality representation. In addition, I enjoy challenging imminent removals and have achieved great success securing deferral of removal and release from detention. Within immigration law, my current interests are in holistically supporting asylum seekers, victims of trafficking, people facing imminent removal, foreign national offenders facing deportation, and people with complex immigration histories. I have a strong track record with asylum claims, further submissions, and appeals at the First-tier and Upper Tribunals. Within public law, I do both judicial reviews for individual clients and strategic litigation on issues engaging immigration and/or human rights law. I took a leading role in developing a challenge to the Home Office's use of Article 13(2) Dublin III regulations to remove asylum seekers who had arrived to the UK by boat to France, acted as junior in a challenge of the Home Office's failure to provide effective access to justice to women detained at Derwentside IRC, and assisted with a successful challenge of trafficking maternity payments. My current interests include: the criminalisation of arrival by boat, Asylum Support (including accommodation issues), and trafficking provisions. Finally, I engage in litigation for damages for false imprisonment and other civil claims. In this role, I have spoken to various media sources, including The Guardian and The Independent, about our vital legal work and its role in giving the most vulnerable access to justice. As a means of making law more accessible and inclusive, I regularly work with and alongside charities. I am also a co-founder & co-director of the annual London Migration Film Festival, the leading project of Migration Collective CIC, which has been running since 2016. The aim of Migration Collective is to challenge the narrow rhetoric on migration that often sees migration, and people on the move, framed in reductive and dehumanising binaries. Before joining Duncan Lewis, I was a manager of refugee services and international family tracing at the British Red Cross in Kent & Sussex, where I worked primarily with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, vulnerable migrants, and people in immigration detention.