Kerenza is recognised as a leading junior in employment law, professional discipline and sports law.

She is regularly instructed as sole counsel on complex and high value matters usually reserved for silks. She frequently appears in multi-day hearings in the Employment Tribunal and before professional discipline panels, including sport and anti-doping tribunals. This has given her extensive experience cross-examining witnesses and making submissions on complicated points of law. 

Kerenza is recognized by both of the independent legal directories, Legal 500 and Chambers UK. Current comments include:

  • "Kerenza ticks all the boxes across all aspects of her work. She is creatively intelligent, strategy-minded and approaches all issues with a comprehensive analysis." - Chambers UK, 2025
  • "Kerenza is a brilliant, persuasive advocate with a wonderful manner with both clients and judges. She is fiercely intelligent, and an excellent case strategist and commercial thinker." - Legal 500, 2025

Previous comments include:

  • "Insightful, analytical, commercial, and a highly effective advocate – measured but extremely powerful when required. She picks up esoteric points with ease."- Legal 500, 2024
  • "She is great with clients and judges, wielding the law like a scalpel."- Chambers UK, 2024
  • "She is a go-to junior for complex discrimination claims - she just 'gets' it."- Chambers UK, 2023
  • "Kerenza is everything you would want in a barrister."- Chambers UK, 2023
  • "Kerenza is insightful, thorough, practical, responsive and very clear in her advice, as well as being a pleasure to work with."- Legal 500, 2023

Kerenza has wide-ranging experience in employee competition law, acting for both employers and employees on restrictive covenants, garden leave, misuse of confidential information and team moves cases. She has successfully represented clients both seeking and resisting urgent injunctive relief and has been instructed as both junior and sole counsel in speedy trials. Recent client feedback states "she is very easy to get on with, personable, down-to-earth, intelligent, capable, insightful, pragmatic". 

Kerenza has acted for individuals and regulators in professional disciplinary processes in a wide-range of fields including the law, education, engineering and accountancy. She has also acted for numerous high profile clubs and individuals from the sports world, including Premiership football clubs and Olympic athletes in defending and prosecuting claims in courts and tribunal, as well as in mediations and arbitrations. 


Experience

Shortlist

Employment

Kerenza is recognised as a leading junior for employment law in both independent legal directories. 

Kerenza routinely works on cases involving unfair dismissal, wrongful dismissal, redundancy, whistleblowing, TUPE, holiday pay, national minimum wage and the Working Time Regulations. She also has extensive experience acting for both employers and employees in employee competition, employee status and discrimination cases (see separate sections below).  

Kerenza is regularly instructed to act as sole counsel in lengthy Employment Tribunal hearings usually reserved for KCs. For example, she has recently acted as sole counsel in:

  • A complex race and sex discrimination claim, which was reported in Times, the Guardian and the Telegraph and received coverage on the ITV news.  
  • An age discrimination claim in which the Claimant was claiming £820,000.  
  • A 10 day maternity discrimination and whistleblowing claim. 

Kerenza was instructed as junior counsel for Uber in the follow-on litigation arising out of the Supreme Court's decision in Uber BV v Aslam [2021] UKSC 5. 

She also recently acted as junior counsel (to Jane Mulcahy KC), representing five Respondents in a substantial piece of litigation including claims of whistleblowing, sex and race discrimination, victimisation, harassment and unfair dismissal, which settled during the first week of a four week trial.  

Kerenza has particular experience of the technology sector (clients have included HP Enterprise Services, Virgin and IBM) and the education sector (clients have included primary and secondary school teachers, primary, secondary and Higher Education institutions). 


Cases

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Employee Competition

Kerenza has wide-ranging experience in employee competition law, advising both employers and employees on restrictive covenants, garden leave, misuse of confidential information and team moves. 

She has successfully acted for employers and employees in obtaining and resisting urgent injunctive relief and has acted as sole and junior counsel in speedy trials, as well as in employment disputes in the High Court more generally involving employee poaching, garden leave and restrictive covenants. 

Kerenza has acted for clients in such diverse areas as private security services, biotech research, recruitment consultants and property developers, as well as for clients in more traditional employee competition battlegrounds such as insurance broking and derivative trading. 

Kerenza regularly contributes to chambers' employee competition bulletin and speaks at the annual employee competition seminar. She has recently co-authored an article published in the ELA bulletin on employees retaining confidential documents post-employment. 

Kerenza is recognised as a leading junior for employment law in the latest edition of both independent legal directories. 

Cases

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Discrimination

Kerenza has extensive experience advising and acting for both Claimants and Respondents in discrimination claims, including those involving sex discrimination, pregnancy and maternity discrimination, discrimination on the grounds of age, sexuality, race, religion, gender reassignment and disability, equal pay claims and claims for victimisation and harassment. 

Kerenza has also acted in cases involving claims of discrimination against service providers. 

Kerenza was appointed to the Equality and Human Rights Commission's Panel of Counsel for 2020-2023.

Kerenza is recognised as a leading junior for employment law in the latest edition of the both independent legal directories, which identify her as "a junior of choice for tricky discrimination claims".

Kerenza has a particular interest in and expertise on conflicts of belief and conflicts between protected characteristics. She has written about the topic here and provided training on it to employers, government bodies and law firms.

Cases

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Whistleblowing

Kerenza has acted in numerous complex whistleblowing claims, including cases featuring interim relief applications. Kerenza has particular expertise  dealing with whistleblowing in the context of in-house lawyers and the unique challenges this presents in relation to legal privilege and the exception set out in s.43B(4) of the Employment Rights Act 1996.

Cases

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Employment Status & Contracts

Kerenza regularly appears in hearings dealing with the thorny question of employee/worker status and advises on the consequences of this for a range of issues including jurisdictional questions of standing to bring claims and quantification questions as to holiday pay and national minimum wage. 

Clients in this area have included sporting bodies as well as some of the big names offering work through digital platforms (Uber, Deliveroo).  

Kerenza recently acted as junior counsel for Uber in the follow-on litigation arising out of the Supreme Court's decision in Uber BV v Aslam [2021] UKSC 5. 


Cases

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Professional Discipline

Kerenza has experience representing both professional regulatory bodies and individuals facings charges of misconduct/breach of their professions rules in a range of fields including medicine, higher education, accountancy, law, civil engineering and sport. She has also advised clients in non-contentious contexts about the best approach to employ in respect of professional discipline procedures.

Cases

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Sport

Kerenza is a highly experienced sports lawyer, having worked on cases before a variety of tribunals and panels in this field. She has worked for various Premier League football clubs, Olympic athletes, an International Cricketer, a team in the English Ice Hockey Premier League, the British Board of Boxing Control and individuals facing disciplinary charges. She has also represented UKAD in prosecuting anti-doping rule violation charges. 

Cases Kerenza has been instructed on in this area have covered issues both on and off the field of play, including sponsorship and other commercial disputes, professional conduct matters, employment and discrimination issues and anti-doping rules. 

Cases

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Civil Fraud, Asset Recovery & Injunctive Relief

Kerenza has worked on a number of high value cases involving civil fraud, including in the context of tax. She has experience of seeking and resisting applications for injunctive relief, including freezing injunctions, Norwich Pharmacal orders, Bankers Trust orders, interim and perceptual injunctions and claims involving conspiracy, dishonest assistance, knowing assistance, breach of trust, procuring breach of contract, unjust enrichment and deceit.  

Kerenza has also worked on cases and provided advice to clients seeking injunctive relief in more unusual circumstances, including assisting a F1 driver to obtain an order requiring his team to nominate him as one of their two drivers for the season and advising the target of a hostile internet campaign about avenues for legal protection. 

Cases

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Achievements

Education

BA Hons in English First Class; LLB First Class

Prizes and Scholarships

  • Recommended for the James Hunt prize for best advocate, Gray’s Inn advocacy training program, 2013.
  • Richard Reeve Foundation Award, 2011.
  • Winner of College of Law’s Negotiation Competition, 2011.
  • The Shakespeare Memorial Award from Gray Inn, 2010.

Publications

Kerenza regularly writes for Blackstone's Employee Competition Bulletin, the ELA Briefing and other legal and market publications. Her recent article on Managing Conflicts of Belief was viewed over 30,000 on social media. Drawing on the knowledge developed in writing this article and conducting cases in this area, Kerenza offers training on managing conflicts of beliefs and conflicts between protected characteristics to employers and law firms.

Conflicting beliefs and balancing rights

Bonus Clawback provisions

FKJ v RVT

ELA's Response to Consultation on Non-Competes

“Profound” changes afoot for anti-suit injunctions?: Gray v Hurley

No Springboard Injunction for Breach of Confidence

Protecting/Exposing Confidential Documents

Before starting pupillage Kerenza worked for a charity representing the interests of women doctors. 

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