Commercial Chancery set 4 Stone Buildings is shaking up its leadership with long-serving head of chambers George Bompas KC preparing to stand down at the same time as senior clerk David Goddard transitions to a consultancy role. 

Bompas will give way to two joint heads of chambers from next March – Richard Hill KC and Sharif Shivji KC – when joint deputy senior clerks Ben Lashmar and Ryan Tunkel will step up to replace Goddard as joint senior clerks.

Both incoming heads of chambers are highly regarded and recently appeared for different parties in the $2bn ‘Tuna Bonds’ litigation, which ran for 12 weeks in 2023 and generated no fewer than 12 High Court judgments before trial. 

Shivji also serves as chair of Advocate, the Bar’s pro bono charity. 

“We are delighted to be taking on this role and leading chambers as it goes from strength to strength,” Hill and Shivji said in a joint statement. “George and David have done a superb job promoting a culture of delivering outstanding work based on intellect, dedication and teamwork in an environment where our barristers are fully supported to flourish at the Bar.”

Goddard wrote on LinkedIn: “I am very pleased to pass on the baton to Ben Lashmar and Ryan Tunkel, who will be outstanding senior clerks. I hope they experience the fantastic working relationship with Richard Hill KC and Sharif Shivji KC as I had with George Bompas KC.”

Bompas, who will continue in full-time practice, is well-regarded by his peers, not least for his legal creativity and acumen and a measured and incisive style of advocacy, with one commentator praising his “encyclopaedic knowledge of vast areas of law”.

His advocacy in Marex Financial – which saw seven Supreme Court judges empanelled – was a recent highlight on the law of reflective loss as it applied to BVI companies, leading to a majority decision still actively discussed in the courts. 

For Goddard, March will see an evolution in a 40-year career as a senior clerk at the set, which he joined from One Essex Court in 1982. During his tenure he has steered the set alongside successive heads of chambers to the point where today it balances the needs of 40 barristers, nine of whom are silks. The set’s services are in demand in leading financial services jurisdictions, from London to Cayman, Singapore to Seychelles, and the BVI to Bermuda and the Bahamas. 

Recent cases in which the set’s tenants have been instructed include Dos Santos v Unitel SA [2024], an appellate ruling which marked a radical shift in the law applied to freezing injunctions, overturning a quarter-century of settled practice on the threshold to which injunctions should meet.

Most recently, Goddard clerked Jonathan Crow CVO KC, the former ‘Chancery Devil’ (the Government Legal Service’s retained counsel for chancery work), in successful litigation before the Court of Appeal regarding the London Metal Exchange, instructed by Hogan Lovells. 

The longstanding clerk has been an ever-present figure at the Institute of Barristers Clerks, where he enjoys the status of life president having been chairman and president.

At the IBC, Goddard has worked with leading figures including David Barnes of Atkin Chambers, Brian Lee of Twenty Essex and 7 King’s Bench Walk, Lucy Barbet of 11KBW, and Nicholas Hill of 3 New Square.

He has also served on numerous Bar Council committees and working parties, retaining that interest as a Bar Council Direct Access Panel member. In 2019 he was honoured by Chambers & Partners when he received a richly deserved Lifetime Achievement Award.