Background
Geoffrey Lawrence was the youngest son of Lord Trevethin, briefly Lord Chief Justice of England in 1921-1922.
Geoffrey Lawrence was the youngest son of Lord Trevethin, briefly Lord Chief Justice of England in 1921-1922.
He attended Haileybury (where Clement Attlee was his junior) and New College, Oxford.
The Lawrence family came from Builth Wells in Radnorshire. Lawrence was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1906, and later joined the chambers of Robert Finlay. The chambers specialised in taking appellate cases to the highest courts—the House of Lords for domestic cases, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for appeals from the Dominions and Colonies.
Finlay came to rely on Lawrence, although for cases from Canada, Lawrence acted as lead counsel with Finlay as junior.
On 26 September 1914, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery Territorial Force (2nd East Anglian Brigade). He was promoted to temporary lieutenant on 20 November 1914.
After the end of the war he continued in membership of the Territorial Army until 1937. On returning to the Bar Lawrence continued to take cases to the Privy Council.
An interest in horses, inherited from his father, led to his appointment as Attorney for the Jockey Club from 1922.
Soon after he was appointed as Recorder of Oxford, a part-time judicial job. In 1927 Lawrence was made a King"s Counsel and appointed Attorney General to the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII). With this appointment came membership of the Council of the Duchy of Cornwall.
Lawrence served in this capacity until, in 1932, he was appointed as a judge of the King"s Bench Division.
With this appointment he became a knight bachelor. As a Judge, Lawrence tended to keep out of the limelight by neither issuing sensational judgments nor drawing attention to himself personally.
When Lord Goddard was chosen as a Law Lord, Lawrence succeeded him as a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1944. He was then elected as President of all the Judges, more through the lack of enemies than any other factor.
His conduct of the trials was praised by many of those involved who appreciated his striving to understand the relevance of each piece of evidence, and willingness to stop long-winded counsel
As a senior legal figure in the House of Lords, he served as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary from 1947 and on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council until he retired in 1957.