About
Built by the people who take these processes apart.
Jesmond is designed, owned and run by four practising employment barristers. It is a DefendThis product.
Why we built it
Fair procedure is mostly a documentation problem.
Employers rarely set out to run an unfair process. What happens instead is ordinary: the manager handling it is busy and has never run one before, the structure lives in someone’s head, an issue quietly goes unanswered, and the reasoning never makes it onto paper. Months later the record has to speak for itself, and it cannot. Procedural failings, not the underlying facts, are a routine reason dismissals are found unfair.
General AI assistants make that worse in a specific way. They will produce a confident document containing details nobody verified, and using one means putting an employee’s health or conduct into a system the employer does not control.
Jesmond takes the opposite position on both counts. It supplies structure rather than conclusions, marks what it does not know instead of inventing it, and is built so that we cannot read what you put into it.
If a feature required us to read case content, the feature is wrong.
What we hold to
Who we are
Two organisations, one product.
Four employment barristers
The founders are practising barristers, each ranked by Legal 500 or Chambers and Partners, who between them have spent decades attacking and defending grievances and disciplinaries — winning and losing. They also sit as independent investigators. Jesmond is what they wish the employers they act for had been using all along.
An engineering team held to the same rule
Jesmond was built to the founders’ specification and to the zero-access design — including the part that binds the people who build it. The engineering team works on synthesised or anonymised data only and holds no key to anything real.
The team
Owned and run by leading barristers.
Jesmond is designed, owned and run by practising employment barristers, working with senior advisers drawn from employment law, legal practice and AI research. The people who built Jesmond handle employment cases for a living.
Gus Baker
Outer Temple Chambers
Called to the Bar in 2015. Practises in employment, commercial litigation, pensions and professional negligence, and regularly conducts internal investigations on behalf of organisations.
“A very hard-working and very talented barrister who stays calm under pressure and is a great team player.” — Legal 500, 2026
David Green
12 King's Bench Walk
Called to the Bar in 2015 and head of the employment team at 12 King's Bench Walk. Practises in personal injury and employment, and acts in cases of abuse, harassment and bullying.
“David Green is superb on every level.” — Chambers & Partners, 2026
Grahame Anderson
Littleton Chambers
Called to the Bar in 2013. Practises in employment and sports litigation, complex discrimination and High Court business protection, and is frequently appointed to conduct investigations.
“Grahame’s technical skill and attention to detail are absolutely forensic.” — Chambers & Partners, 2026
Daniel Barnett
Outer Temple Chambers
The UK’s leading human resources and employment law commentator. Founder of three companies in legal training and technology, author of over 30 textbooks and presenter of The Legal Hour on LBC Radio.
“Daniel Barnett is a gamechanger in employment law.” — Chambers & Partners, 2026
Assisted and advised by
Charles Wynn-Evans
Led Dechert’s London employment team for 24 years, and wrote The Law of TUPE Transfers.
Liz Dux
A solicitor of 30 years at Slater and Gordon, latterly Chambers Director at Littleton Chambers.
Professor Tim Rocktäschel
Founder of a $650M-funded AI company, and Professor of AI at UCL.
What we hold to
Three commitments we will not trade away.
Human-owned outcomes
Jesmond supplies questions and structure. The findings, the choices and the words are the user’s. We will not ship a feature that decides for them.
Jesmond drafts; it doesn’t decide
Where something is unknown, the draft says so. We would rather hand over a document with TO BE CONFIRMED in it than a tidy one containing an invented fact.
Confidentiality as architecture
Zero access is a property of how the system is built, not a promise in a contract. If a feature required us to read case content, the feature is wrong.
See Jesmond on your own procedures.
A short, guided walkthrough — no case content leaves your device.