Peter Leaver KC's working life joined three institutions that rarely shared a résumé: One Essex Court, the Premier League and the London Court of International Arbitration. Leaver, a commercial barrister who led England's top football league and later chaired the LCIA board, died in 2026 at 81.

Born on November 28, 1944, Leaver attended Aldenham School and Trinity College Dublin before he was called to the Bar in 1967. He joined One Essex Court in 1973 and took silk in 1987. In announcing his death, One Essex Court said he had belonged to the chambers for 53 years.

The foundation of that long association was exacting commercial work. Leaver handled disputes involving banking, insurance, financial services, energy, intellectual property and the sale of goods, often alongside questions about which court had authority to hear a case. His notable briefs included Walker v Standard Chartered Bank, the Grupo Torras litigation and Donohue v Armco.

Leaver also carried his legal judgment into public and regulatory service. Appointed a Recorder on the South Eastern Circuit in 1994, he served as a Recorder and deputy High Court judge until 2017. He was also a director of the Investment Management Regulatory Organisation. Those responsibilities ran alongside a practice whose subject matter ranged widely, but whose constant was the close reading of complex commercial arrangements.

Football supplied the career's most conspicuous change of setting. A former Tottenham Hotspur director and a lifelong supporter of the game, Leaver was chosen in 1997 to succeed Rick Parry as chief executive of the Premier League. He officially began on April 3, entering the post as clubs confronted major questions about broadcasting and European competition. At his appointment, he told The Independent that the Bar had taught him not to act until he understood all the issues: "In other words, I start with an open mind on everything." He led the league until 1999.

In the later phase of his career, Leaver concentrated on international commercial arbitration. He sat in disputes under the rules of institutions in several jurisdictions, held places on Singapore and Hong Kong arbitration panels, and served on the Law Society's accreditation panel of arbitrators. From 2008 to 2012 he chaired the board of the London Court of International Arbitration. When the LCIA announced another leadership transition in 2022, incoming chair Christopher Style KC acknowledged the influence of Leaver and fellow former chair Bill Rowley on the institution.

Sport and adjudication met again in Leaver's work for the National Anti-Doping Panel. The NADP Board appointed him the panel's first president, and the panel began taking referrals in April 2008. His task was to oversee its work and select tribunals to decide cases independently. In its annual report, Sport Resolutions recorded both his appointment and the panel's move into operation.

Leaver was survived by his wife, Jane, and their children, Marcus, Rebecca, James and Benjamin. The record of his work remained unusually broad but closely connected: demanding commercial cases, judicial service, leadership in global arbitration, a turn at the center of English club football, and the first years of an independent national anti-doping tribunal. Each carried forward the habits he described on entering the Premier League, especially the discipline of understanding every issue before deciding what came next.