Biography
Dr David Sawtell is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Construction law at King's College London. He is practising barrister at 39 Essex Chambers, specialising in construction law and property. David is also a Bye-Fellow at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, where he is the College Teaching Associate for Land Law and Equity.
David undertook his BA, MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, and the MSc in Construction Law at King's College London, winning prizes for best overall graduate, best dissertation, the best performance in the second-year examinations, and best performance in the Module AL construction technology examination. In 2021, he won the prize for the best paper presented by a doctoral student at the Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference for his paper ‘Injunctions, land and the cynical breach’, and was awarded a Francis Paterson Scholarship from the Society of Construction Law in respect of his PhD.
David is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.
Research interests
David's academic research focuses on the doctrinal study of private law relating to the development of land and the built environment, with especial research interests in the taxonomic interface between construction law, land law, equity and unjust enrichment, as well as the law relating to building safety. David also has research interests in construction adjudication, legal history and comparative law.
He is the co-author of Dovar and Sawtell on the Building Safety Act (Sweet & Maxwell, 2025), the editor (along with Sir Peter Coulson) of and contributor to The History of the Technology and Construction Court on its 150th Anniversary (Hart, 2023), as well as numerous other book chapters and articles.
Teaching interests
- Construction law
- Land law
- Equity
- Unjust enrichment
Selected publications
Dovar, D. and Sawtell, D. (2025) Dovar and Sawtell on the Building Safety Act. Sweet & Maxwell.
Coulson, P. and Sawtell, D. (2023) The History of the Technology and Construction Court on its 150th Anniversary. Hart.
Sawtell, D. (2022) 'Injunctions, land and the cynical breach' Legal Studies 42(4) 649.
Sawtell, D. (2022) 'Overage agreements and temporal aspects of property development in English land law' Conveyancer and Property Law 4 347.