Sir Ivan John Lawrence KC (born 24 December 1936) is a former British Conservative Member of Parliament and criminal barrister.
[2] Called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1962, Lawrence was pupil to James Burge, the leading criminal junior who represented Stephen Ward in the Profumo trials; was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1981; a Recorder of the Crown Court in 1985 (serving for 19 years); a Bencher of the Inner Temple in 1990; elected Head of Chambers at One Essex Court; and was knighted in 1992.
He successfully appeared for the Defence in a mass-murder war crimes trial at The Hague and for the snooker champion Quenten Hanne charged with rape.
He has been partly responsible for a number of improvements in Criminal Justice such as the introduction of tape recorded police interviews with suspects and the law against suspicious transactions.
His memoir, My Life of Crime: cases and causes, was published by Book Guild on 30 September 2010 and reprinted in paperback on 1 February 2012.
[1] He married Gloria, whom he had met at the Oxford University Progressive Jewish Society, at the West London Synagogue in April 1966.