A barrister has said he was blacklisted by a leading law firm after he tweeted about killing a fox with a baseball bat on Boxing Day 2019.

Jolyon Maugham, director of the Good Law Project, said that ‘Magic Circle’ law firm Allen & Overy refused to give him or other members of the Devereux Chambers any work as long as he was still among the roster of civil litigation barristers there.

Mr Maugham faced a flurry of criticism on social media after he tweeted about using a baseball club to kill a fox, which he said had become trapped when it tried to enter his henhouse.

He wrote on the social media site on Sunday: “Am remembering when Allen & Overy’s head of litigation told my old chambers that, so long as I was in chambers, not only would they not send any work to me, but they would not send any work to any other members of chambers either.”

When asked what led to the dispute, he said: “It was in the aftermath of my stupid tweet about killing a fox.

The animal welfare charity concluded after its investigation that a prosecution was not warranted. Mr Maugham later apologised for his tweet after receiving backlash, adding that his chickens “were very distressed by the fox”.