Dame Janet Smith

Janet Smith is a former High Court Judge and President of the Council of the Inns of Court. She became Independent Assessor for Miscarriages of Justice in June 2011.

After being called to the Bar in 1972, she practised in Manchester for twenty years, specialising in the area of clinical negligence. She was made a QC in 1986 and a High Court Judge in 1992. In 2002 she became the fourth woman to be promoted to the Court of Appeal, and published the findings of the high-profile Shipman Enquiry in the same year. In October 2012 she was appointed by the BBC to lead an inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile.