The Honourable Mr Justice Cawson
Mark Cawson grew up in Southport on Merseyside. He attended Wrekin College and then graduated in with and LL.B (Hons) from the University of Liverpool in 1980. Mark subsequently spent a year at the Liverpool Guild of Students as the Guild Sabbatical Officer.
Mark was called to the Bar in 1982 by Lincoln's Inn. Lady Arden, a retired UK Supreme Court judge, was one of Mark's pupil masters. Mark practised as a barrister from Exchange Chambers in Manchester and latterly also at Three Stone Buildings in London, until 2020.
Throughout his career at the Bar, Mark specialised in Chancery and Commercial work. He took Silk in 2001, becoming a Queen's Counsel (now King's Counsel).
Mark is a former Chair of the Northern Circuit Commercial Bar Association and the Northern Chancery Bar Association.
Mark has a long history of judicial experience. He sat as a Recorder from 1999 and was appointed as a Deputy High Court Judge in 2004.
In November 2020, he was appointed as a full-time Specialist Circuit Judge, sitting primarily in the Business and Property Courts in Manchester.
On October 1st 2025, Mark was appointed a High Court judge sitting in the Business and Property Courts (Chancery Division). He is the first Liverpool graduate to be appointed to a Chancery position since Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead in the early 1980s.
Written by Dr John Tribe.