Usman Tariq KC

Usman Tariq KC is a King’s Counsel at the Scottish Bar.

He has held a number of professional appointments in his career. He was standing counsel to the UK Government in Scotland for nine years and latterly served as Second Standing Junior to the Advocate General for Scotland before his appointment as silk. He has served as a full-time Advocate Depute at the Crown Office between2021 and 2022 where he prosecuted serious crime. Since 2022, he is appointed as counsel to the UK Covid-19 Public Inquiry chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett. He is a member of the legal team investigating core political and administrative governance and decision-making across the UK in relation to the pandemic.

He is passionate about improving diversity and inclusion in the legal profession in Scotland. In 2017, he co-founded the Scottish Ethnic Minorities Lawyers Association (SEMLA). SEMLA aims to improve ethnic diversity in the legal profession in Scotland. In 2021, he was appointed to the Law Society of Scotland’s Racial Inclusion Group which undertook a systematic review of racial inclusion in the profession and produced a report with recommendations. In2023, he was appointed to the Scottish Government’s Future of the Legal Profession short-life working group. The purpose of this group is to examine the evidence and propose improvements to address the challenges of recruitment and retention in the profession and to provide support for the planning, collaboration and improvement of legal services in Scotland. In 2024, he was appointed to the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland’s Judicial Diversity Reference Group.

He is an alumnus of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP). The IVLP is the U.S. Department of State’s premier professional exchange programme in which emerging foreign leaders are invited to the U.S. to meet with professional counterparts and cultivate lasting relationships. In 2022, he spent time in Washington D.C., San Francisco, Portland and Montana meeting with various federal and state governmental bodies, NGOs and stakeholders in a human rights project on Advancing Minority Rights in Europe.