Mr Fred Motson

Professional biography

After teaching Law part-time while studying for the Bar, Fred was called to the Bar in 2008 but decided to instead pursue the academic study of law. Fred began his career at the University of Westminster, achieving first lectureship and then senior lectureship. After leaving Westminster Fred combined a wide array of teaching and assessment-focused roles including lecturing on undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the University of Buckingham, working for Kaplan Open Learning at the University of Essex, for BPP University on their LPC and LLB programmes and working as Partnership Curriculum Leader for Law at the University of Northampton.

Fred joined the Open University as a Lecturer in Law in 2020 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Law in 2024. At the Open University, Fred has been heavily involved in producing the modules which make up the current LLB Law programme offering. He currently Chairs two law modules, W112 Civil justice and tort law and W321 SQE: legal system, public law and criminal litigation.

As part of its commitment to social justice, the Open University is a Signatory Member of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (UN PRME) and Fred acts as PRME Lead for the University. He is also Sustainability Lead for the Open University Law School.

He also maintains strong links to the profession, combining his Open University role with senior assessment roles in relation to the Bar Standards Board (BSB) centralised Professional Ethics Examination for pupil barristers and to the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEX) routes to legal qualification.

Research interests

Fred has a wide range of research interests which include sports law, property law and the law of obligations. He has a particular interest in the intersection between law and technology, both in how technology can shape or change the practice of law and in how law responds to technological advances. 

This includes his ongoing part-time study toward a Doctorate of Philosophy with the Open University. His thesis, "The Herculean Referee in the Age of Technology", will explore how the introduction of technological decision-making aids has impacted on the role of the referee in interpreting and applying the rules of sport. Fred is focusing on the use of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) in professional football and his research will examine the extent to which legal theories about how judges make decisions can inform and assist match officials in training, preparing and performing their role. He is supervised by Professor Simon Gardiner and Professor Stephanie Pywell of the Open University and Professor Simon Lee of Aston University.

Much of Fred's work is sociolegal in nature and he recently, in collaboration with Professor Pywell, concluded a large-scale empirical research project exploring how people who led weddings and similar ceremonies implemented COVID-related laws and guidance at ceremonies. Fred has taken a leading role in a range of interdisciplinary projects relating to law and psychology and law and humanities.

Teaching interests

In his career to date, Fred has taught all of the "core" LLB subjects and has been involved in designing and leading modules in most of these areas. He has also taught across a range of qualifications from level 3 (i.e. "A" Level) to level 7 (i.e. postgraduate and professional study), including legal qualifications such as the Graduate Diploma in Law and Legal Practice Course Masters and in cross-disciplinary programmes in International Relations, Diplomacy and socio-legal studies.

Fred has written academic texts on, inter alia, contract law, advocacy, negotiation and the law of tort. His most recent textbook, Essential Contract Law for SQE1 written with Stephen Bunbury of the University of Westminster, was published in 2025 by Routledge.