Maliha Abu-Nowar

About Maliha Abu-Nowar

Maliha joined Wilsons in October 2023 as a solicitor in the Public Law and Human Rights Department. Maliha represents marginalised clients to challenge state decisions by way of judicial review and civil claims for compensation. Drawing on her previous experiences of working with multi-national corporations, together with her growing expertise in representing trafficking victims, Maliha is also focused on investigating modern slavery allegations and bringing claims against employers for labour exploitation.

Maliha trained and qualified at a City law firm. She then left banking law to work at Wesley Gryk Solicitors. Maliha’s work covered a range of nationality and immigration matters, with a particular focus on Appendix FM applications for partners, children and parents and applications outside of the immigration rules based on Article 8 rights. She also represented victims of domestic abuse under a referral agreement with charity Southall Black Sisters. After her return from the United States in 2022, Maliha joined Duncan Lewis Solicitors, where her work included representing asylum seekers, victims of trafficking and Windrush victims on wide-reaching judicial review challenges.

Maliha studied law at SOAS, University of London and completed her legal practice course at the University of Law. She then obtained her LLM from Duke University School of Law, graduating with cum laude honours in 2022.

At Duke, Maliha spent a semester working with the Duke International Human Rights Clinic, where her research focused on the intersectionality between national security and gender. Maliha also completed an externship with Law for Black Lives as part of the Movement Lawyering Lab. Maliha worked in the strategic litigation department to bring coram nobis claims for individuals who had been wrongly incarcerated during the war on drugs. She also worked on a campaign with a grassroots initiative aiming to research and map out areas of inequity to improve Atlanta’s infrastructure.

Languages: Arabic

Interests: cooking, reading and tennis

‍