Siân E. Jones

After a short period in private practice Siân Jones entered the magistrates’ courts service as a justices’ legal adviser in 1983. She worked at magistrates’ courts in the Worcestershire, the West Midlands, North Wales, Cleveland, and Cambridgeshire and Essex, holding office as justices’ clerk from 2004. In 2018 she took up her present position in the Legal Operations Team of HM Courts and Tribunals Service as Head of Legal and Professional Services and secretary of the Justices’ Legal Advisers and Court Officers’ Services (formerly the Justices’ Clerks’ Society). She is one of seven senior lawyers authorised by the Chief Justice to direct justices’ legal advisers on their advice to magistrates.  

She was a member of the Justices’ Clerks’ Society’s council from 2007, being elected President in 2012. She was a member of the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee from 2015 to 2018, and presently attends it in an advisory capacity. She is principally responsible for developing the Magistrates’ Courts Rules and advises colleagues in HMCTS, Ministry of Justice, and other government departments on legal issues relating to magistrates’ courts.

Siân is a recognised authority on magistrates’ courts criminal and civil procedure. She has also made a particular study of pseudo-law, including ‘freemen on the land’ and similar movements. 

Siân has worked for Lexis Nexis since 2021 as a consulting editor of Stones’ Justices’ Manual, the leading practitioner’s work on magistrates’ courts law, and also edits the youth justice section of Clarke Hall Morrison on Children.