After graduating with a degree in law, Raffield trained as an actor. He continues to work as an actor and director. Raffield studied for his PhD at Brikbeck College, London, and has subsequently published extensively in the fields of law and literature and legal history. He is the author of Images and Cultures of Law in Modern England: Justice and Political Power, 1558-1660 (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and is currently writing his next book, Shakespeare's Imaginary Constitution: Late Elizabethan Politics and the Theatre of Law (Hart, 2011). Raffield is a member of the Italian Cultural Association for the Study of Law and Literature (Associazionne Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura). He is the founding coeditor of the journal Law and Humanities. In 2009 Raffield became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.