Fred Motson

Having gained a first in Law with Politics from Buckingham and the Edgar Palamountain Award for the student graduating with the highest marks across the University, Fred went on to win the College of Law BVC Negotiation Competition, come second in the CEDR National Negotiation Competition and be a finalist in the Gray’s Inn Debating Competition. While called to the Bar in 2008, Fred chose to pursue a career in academia and from 2008 – 2016 Fred worked at the University of Westminster, latterly as a senior lecturer.

After leaving London to start a family, Fred combined a wide array of teaching and assessment-focused roles including lecturing at the University of Buckingham, working for Kaplan Open Learning at the University of Essex, for BPP University on their LPC and LLB programmes and working as Partnership Curriculum Leader for Law at the University of Northampton.

He also maintained strong links to the profession in providing CPD for legal professionals through Central Law Training and continues to combine his Open University role with involvement as a marking team leader for the Bar Standards Board and a Chief Examiner and Reviewer for The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives.

Fred has written academic texts on, inter alia, contract law, advocacy, negotiation and the law of tort.

Fred has a wide range of research interests which include sports law, property law, personal injury law, contract law and tort law. Fred has a particular interest in the intersection between law and technology, both in how technology can shape or change the practice of law and in how law responds to technological advances. Fred has a number of forthcoming projects focused on the latter, with a particular emphasis on how representations of the law in science fiction can inform legal policy today.

Fred will shortly commence his study toward a Doctorate of Philosophy with the Open University. His thesis, provisionally entitled "The Herculean Referee in the Age of Technology", will explore how the introduction of technological decision-making aids has impacted on the role of the referee in interpreting and applying the rules of sport. Fred intends to focus on the use of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) in professional football and his research will examine the extent to which legal theory (particularly that of Ronald Dworkin) can inform and assist match officials in training, preparing and performing their role. He will be supervised by Professor Simon Gardiner and Professor Hakeem Yusuf.