Book reviews

Gary McIndoe and Gemma Tracey

PUBLISHER: LAW BRIEF PUBLISHING
ISBN: 978-1913715168
PRICE: £49.99

Law Brief Publishing was founded in 2006 with the aim of publishing practical guides for the profession, often on very specific topics or, in the publisher’s own words, “niche law books”. One of the latest books in their series is Deportation: A Practical Guide by immigration solicitors Gary McIndoe and Gemma Tracey. It seeks primarily to assist practitioners who act for foreign national prisoners in deportation cases. 

There are useful chapters on the key legal concepts in deportation and on the provisions that apply to EEA nationals before and after Brexit. Three appendices – providing a checklist on taking instructions, a list of documents to obtain, and a template skeleton argument for deportation appeals – will also assist practitioners. 

There are, however, two shortcomings. 

The first is that the book is uneven. Twenty two pages are devoted to the provisions applying to EEA nationals, but only six to the statutory provisions on who is exempt from deportation, and the majority of that to Windrush scheme rather than the British Nationality Act 1981. And though it is directed at practitioners, beyond the template skeleton argument at appendix C, there is very little on conducting an appeal against deportation before the First-tier Tribunal.

The second is the price. For their length, none of Law Brief Publishing’s titles are cheap. The investment can be justified for slightly longer books in the series, or for those will survive changes in the law: see, for instance, Richard Padley’s A Practical Guide to the Use of Expert Evidence in Criminal Cases. But at £49.99 for 96 pages, in a field of law which changes constantly, the price of this particular work is difficult to justify.

Paul Harvey, advocate