The Lord Pannick KC, to give David Philip Pannick his full title, is the barrister leading Manchester City's legal team at the International Dispute Resolution Centre in the city of London for the next ten weeks as the independent hearing into the Premier League's 115 charges against them takes place.

Pannick, 68, arrived at the IDRC, which lies in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral, for the start of this case on Monday morning sporting a dark blue tie with a sky blue design. The Blackstone Chambers advocate previously represented City when they successfully overturned a two-year ban from European competition after being found guilty of breaking UEFA's Financial Fair Play rules at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Over four years later, almost 460 miles from Lausanne on the banks of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, City have again hired his services as they seek to clear their name, but this time once and for all. Pannick, however, has hardly been short of work over recent years.

Later that year, the barrister appeared on behalf of Shamima Begum at the Supreme Court in Westminster against the former home secretary, Sajid Javid. He has also advocated and opposed ex-prime minister Boris Johnson in court over the last five years.

Pannick received a life peerage as a crossbencher in September 2008 and has since argued cases before the Appellate Committee. Ahead of his title getting gazetted as Baron Pannick of Radlett in the county of Hertfordshire, he helped the British Olympic Committee successfully resist their refusal to select former Team GB sprinter Dwain Chambers for the Beijing Olympics that summer.

In public life, Pannick has been a fellow at the University of Oxford's All Souls College since 1978. He has also been a Gray's Inn bencher for almost two decades and chairs the Legal Friends (UK) of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.