Ex-Linklaters partner Alexandra Marks and Funke Abimbola (pictured), general counsel of Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, have been recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours List, which was unveiled on Friday (16 June).

Marks, who has been awarded a CBE for public service, was a commercial property partner at Linklaters for more than 20 years and she remains a consultant at the firm.

Outside commercial law, Marks has sat as a recorder (crime and civil) since 2002 for the South Eastern Circuit, one of the six regional divisions of the Bar in England and Wales. In 2010, she also became a High Court deputy judge, and in 2012, she was appointed commissioner at the Judicial Appointments Commission. The following year, she became commissioner at the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the UK statutory body responsible for investigating alleged miscarriages.

She was also president of the City of London Law Society from 2008 to 2009 and an executive board member of JUSTICE, an all-party law reform and human rights organisation, for 18 years.

Meanwhile, Abimbola, who has been GC of Roche since December 2015, has been honoured with an MBE for her services to diversity in the legal profession and to young people. She was a member of the judging panel for the British Legal Awards last year.

Abimbola said: "My aim is to use this recognition as an elevated platform to open more doors for under-represented communities and to further advance the equality agenda by demonstrating that we are all bigger than the box that either society or the workplace chooses to put us in. I will be carrying as many people along with me as possible and continue to drive lasting societal change."

Other members of the legal profession to be honoured on the list include Catherine Waters, the former matron at the Old Bailey, responsible for giving medical care to judges, lawyers and defendants. Waters received an OBE for her services to improve the welfare of court users.

Professor Carolyn Hamilton, who is also a barrister, has become a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE), for services to children's rights.

Meanwhile, foreign office official Patrick Lamb picked up an OBE for his work supporting the Government Legal Service, an umbrella group comprising about 2,000 qualified lawyers working as civil servants.

The former president of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, Andrea Brewster, also picked up an OBE for services to intellectual property.