Q: Thank you so much for doing this, first of all, could you please briefly introduce yourself to our readers?
Ray: Hi everyone! I’m Head of Legal Research at the Office for Environmental Protection (The OEP). The OEP is a fairly new public body that protects and improves the environment by holding government and other public authorities, like the Environment Agency, or water companies, to account.
Q: What inspired you to pursue a career in law?
Ray: Like most people in sixth form I did not have a clue what I wanted to do as a career, or even what I should study at university. Whilst in sixth form I became a music promoter on the weekends; I’d hire music venues and cool bands, and miraculously make quite a bit of money. I dreamily thought I might want to work in the music industry and manage bands, and put on festivals, so I chose to study law at university as that seemed a glamorous and interesting subject, and in my mind at the time was definitely relevant to being a savvy music executive. Instead, I got interested in environmental issues at university and decided to refocus on working in environmental law.
Q: I know that you were a professor at Oxford, how did you find the opportunities and students there?
Ray: My first post university job, when I was 22 years old, was as a Research Assistant in Environmental Law at Oxford University. I had gone to a comprehensive school, and it took a bit of time to adjust to the surroundings and traditions there, but I liked it. I think I had imposter syndrome for a little bit as well, as everyone else I worked with had already written lots of books and seemed a lot older, but I have always had imaginative ideas about investigating issues so I fitted in alright. I never taught any students at Oxford, I just worked on research projects, so I spent most of my time in the library (I’m so old most resources were not online then!). I then moved on to Imperial College, then University College London (where I was deputy director of a large research centre) and then eventually back to Oxford. When I first started the environment was a very niche legal subject area, but over time it gained much more significance and attention and that provided a lot more opportunities to interact with other disciplines and be involved in really interesting projects.
Q: What impacted your choice to go into legal research in comparison to legal practice?
Ray: My choice was influenced by wanting to be involved in exciting cutting-edge work. My friends in legal practice made lots of money by doing things like moving rich people’s money around the world, but I got to be directly involved in lots of novel and complex issues that often nobody has ever looked at before. It’s really cool to be the first person to have ever looked at something important for the first time. I have undertaken projects looking at lots of different environmental areas including GMOs, chemicals, energy, climate change, waste crime, nuclear and fisheries. I had the chance to go to the climate change COPs from an early stage, had my work talked about at the United Nations, and been on TV, radio and written media loads. Unlike legal practice I have also worked short days and had very long holidays, so it was a good career choice for me.
Q: What legal topics currently interest you and why?
Ray: I am really interested in technology and how it can be used in a legal/evidential context. A few years ago, I set up an academic spin off company with a Professor of Earth Observation and a satellite expert from the defence intelligence sector (and still work on it part time). We have worked on lots of investigative cases using archived satellite data to provide evidence in some really interesting legal cases (e.g. we showed that a suspect’s car wasn’t on his drive during the time of a murder, and the exact timeline of an oil pipeline leak), as well as designing and implementing AI based detection models that can proactively find certain forms of environmental crime. So not all AI is bad! At the OEP I am currently working on a project that is looking at whether inspections by regulators in the environmental sphere are working well or not. The effectiveness of inspector checks is gaining a lot more attention following the massive raw sewage spills into our rivers and seas by the water companies that you’ve probably heard about in the media.
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