Clare Moulder, 1978

Dame Clare Moulder read Law at Clare. Her most recent role was as a judge of the High Court.

Who was your greatest Clare influence and why?

I was fortunate to have Elizabeth Freeman as a supervisor at Clare. She was an excellent tutor and her thorough approach to the law of tort has remained with me. She was also a positive  role model at a time when co-education at Clare was relatively recent.

Clare's Story

I well remember receiving the telegram informing me that I had won an exhibition to study at Clare. I was particularly delighted having been advised by my teachers not to apply to Clare (they suggested that I should try applying to an “easier“college).

My time at Clare dispelled any doubt that I was right to apply to Clare-the collegiate atmosphere amongst the students in one of the relatively smaller colleges extended across all subjects and I made friends across the disciplines.

It was however my core law studies which I was to take with me through my professional life and to which I have had occasion to be grateful as my career has progressed.

I trained as a solicitor and spent a large part of my career as a finance partner with the international law firm, Linklaters. At Linklaters I often had occasion to draw on my company law from Cambridge to analyse novel finance transactions and I was always grateful that I was a law graduate who had had an opportunity to study the topic in depth.

In 2010 I decided to apply to be a part time judge and from that starting point, decided that I would like to become a High Court judge. Lacking any background in litigation and not coming from the traditional source of judges, the Bar, my initial applications were met with point blank refusal. However my stubbornness again manifested itself and I persisted, being appointed a full time judge in 2015 and a High Court judge (Queen’s Bench Division) in 2017.
As a judge of the Queen’s Bench Division my range of work encompassed a wide range of subject matter and I was forced to delve into the outer reaches of my memory to see what I could recall from my days at Clare of other areas of law including criminal law and administrative law.

It is however as a judge of the Commercial  Court for the past five years that I have been particularly grateful for my legal training at Clare as I was faced with some of the most complex commercial cases in the English court. Having the foundation of Clare behind me has given me the confidence to tackle this challenge.

I never imagined as an undergraduate that my career would take me first to the City and then to the Royal Courts of Justice. It is a testament to Clare that that I have felt equipped to embrace two quite different careers albeit stemming from the same legal foundation.

In October 2022 I am stepping down as a judge of the High Court ready to take on my next challenge. None of us know what the future holds when we graduate but those who are able to have the benefit of an education at Clare will I am sure be equipped not only for their immediate future when they leave but also throughout their professional career to embrace whatever course they seek to pursue.