Professor Deveral Capps

Deveral is the Dean of Leeds Law School, joining Leeds Beckett in 2015.  As a legal academic he has taught on undergraduate, postgraduate and professional courses and published widely on legal education, legal skills and eCommerce law. He is a barrister, and a door tenant at Trinity Chambers, and has practiced in both civil and criminal law appearing in courts across the North of England.

Over the 25 years that Deveral has been involved in Higher Education, he has had significant input into the development of legal education and training in the UK. He has significant expertise in barristers’ training and between 2011 and 2013 was a member of the steering panel for the Legal Education and Training Review, the largest review of legal education in the UK ever held.  He is a consultant to the Bar Standards Board’s and sat on their Future Bar Training Programme Board between 2017 and 2019.  He is a member of the Bar Standard Board’s Curriculum and Assessments Review (“CAR”) group was directly involved with the development of the new syllabuses and assessment strategy for all bar courses commencing in 2020 and led the Bar Standards Board review of whether European Law should remain as a Foundation of Legal Knowledge for the academic component of bar training following Brexit.  He is currently reviewing the requirements for the mandatory training and assessment of advocacy and negotiation skills during pupillage.

As an expert in Quality Assurance, Deveral has a deep understanding of academic quality and assurance processes. He is an experienced external examiner, including lead external examiner, for all types of academic and professional awards and has been a member of Institutional inspecting panels on behalf of the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Bar Standards Board.  Deveral was a panel member for the subject pilot of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) between 2017 and 2019 and was the deputy chair for the most recent QAA subject benchmark statement review for law.  He is the Honourary Treasurer for the Committee of Heads of University Law Schools (CHULS), which is one of the five learned societies of law.

Deveral provides support for master’s dissertations.