Dr Victoria McCloud (Master McCloud) is a Former Master of the Senior Courts, Queen’s Bench Division and later King’s Bench Division. Since moving on from that judicial role she has maintained her activity and speaking in fields as diverse as historic abuse litigation reform, AI and legal tech, and Diversity Inclusion and Equality. She is now also a practising mediator in civil work via CADR, Westwood Mediation and Trust Mediation, and recently launched her own specialist company “Limelight Resolution” providing ADR in the creative industries such as TV, theatre, film and dance. She has also been appointed as a Legal Chair of the Medical Practitioners’ Tribunal to hear trials of serious misconduct in the medical and associate medical professions. She is a consultant for W-Legal Solicitors and an Associate member of Gatehouse Chambers.
Her academic background was originally in experimental psychology, which is the field in which she obtained her doctorate, before turning to the law as a barrister and later as a judge. She is the author of a number of academic and practitioner books on civil litigation, personal injury and surveillance and intelligence law as well as occasionally writing for academic journals.
She heard the full range of civil cases in the Queen’s Bench Division and in particular many historic abuse claims ranging from single victim to multiple victim cases often against public bodies or institutions.
In 2016, she commenced a process of consultation with professionals working in the historic abuse field, with a view to seeking consensus about how to improve the experience of justice for victims and for defendants, as well as to improve efficiency of management and trial of such claims. The Historic Abuse Lawyers’ forum (HALF) was set up by her to encourage that process and it is exploring the full range of potential improvements in historic abuse cases ranging from pre-action conduct and disclosure right through to alternative approaches to trial and resolution. She has promoted the ideas that in the historic abuse field the approach of the court and parties should be to (1) manage and try claims in a manner which avoids or minimises causing further harm to any victim of abuse, (2) seek procedural means by which the legal process and the recovery process for the victim should be consistent with each other and not acting against each other where possible and (3) aim to ascertain not simply the narrow facts of any given case but also in institutional cases ‘why’ and ‘how to prevent in future’, as part of acknowledging both the validity and wider value of victims’ experiences.