‘Nosce te ipsum’: know thyself

I remember the day of my pupillage interview well. The snow was falling, the log fire was burning and a pre-Raphaelite heroine stared back at me from the bookshelf in Chambers’ waiting room. The interview was distinctly abstract and esoteric. Somehow, amid questions centring on criminal justice policy the topic turned to Persian poetry. Never in a million years had I thought Hafez, Sadi and Rumi – literary luminaries familiar from my childhood – would make a guest appearance at a legal interview. But something that day clicked, the stars seemed to align and 18 months later I found myself back at Gray’s Inn as a pupil barrister.

The early days were great fun, but let’s not pretend it was all roses. As a criminal pupil, cutting one’s teeth in the Magistrates’ Courts is an important rite of passage. It is here that an advocate learns the rudiments of their trade. Bail applications, summary trials and pleas in mitigation – all play their part in upskilling a baby barrister for later practice in the Crown Court. But COVID-19 made it difficult to get into the swing of things. Intermittent lockdowns, pandemic protocols and the passage of emergency legislation exacerbated what was already a steep learning curve. Navigating a landscape punctuated by cloud video platforms, R v Manning [2020] and new COVID-related offences was no easy feat fresh out of Bar school. Looking back, I think I speak on behalf of my cohort when I say we feel we earned our stripes! Pandemic pupillage really tested our mettle, but in some ways bonded us to the profession more than we could have imagined.

Practising allyship

During this period, I was confronted by another uphill challenge. As a Type 1 Diabetic, my health was almost always haywire. Administering insulin injections, treating hypoglycaemia and keeping an eye on forever fluctuating blood sugar levels is an arduous task at the best of times – let alone when one is taking instructions, giving advice or representing clients in court.

Sooner or later, I determined what worked for me. It was not just about taking snacks into court or asking for breaks to test my glucose readings, as conventional wisdom would have it. Instead, what was required was a fundamental reconfiguration in my routine. I needed to repurpose my time carefully – so that I could adequately prepare my cases each night, while also building in time to rest, medicate, exercise and forward-plan my meals.

Not everyone always understood this, especially seeing as mine was a non-visible disability (NVD). I was told that ‘a strapping young lad’ like me would not need reasonable adjustments. Although the Bar has come on leaps and bounds so far as diversity is concerned, I still do not feel that we have got disability access right. I am not asking for colleagues to double up as endocrinologists, but I do think it is important to practise allyship. That means taking strides to support those experiencing challenges – whether NVDs or otherwise – and to ensure level playing fields. At the very least, it means doing away with flippancy.

Listening to one’s inner moral compass

Getting to grips with the law was challenging – but nothing kept me awake more at night than the ethical dilemmas I encountered every day. Practising in crime, it is not uncommon to see clients change their instructions, pursue unrealistic defences or even become hostile towards their representation. Handling these scenarios can be complex. It requires tact, judgment and confidence, all of which come with experience. Thankfully, I found that junior juniors can generally rely on the advice of practitioners higher up in the chambers foodchain when responding to these situations. Services such as the Bar Council’s Ethical Enquiries Helpline also provide critical guidance at times of ambiguity. If there is one thing experience has taught me, it’s that one should never be afraid to ask. And where in doubt, listening to one’s inner moral compass is imperative. Generally-speaking, I found intuition to be a powerful tool – and if something doesn’t feel right, it’s better to address it rather than brush it off.

Growing an organic practice

When I started on my feet, I didn’t know what I wanted to practise long-term (beyond the broad rubric of crime). In my first few years, I defended in matters across the board: organised crime, narcotics and firearms occupied a lot of my time. But a series of instructions in 2021-22 led me into more niche domains, including art and antiquities trafficking and diplomatic immunities and inviolabilities. Suffice to say, one does not always need to have a pre-planned roadmap. Often, new courses are charted out spontaneously and practices grow organically.

Four years into my practice, I decided to bite the bullet and do something different. As much as I enjoyed the cut and thrust of criminal advocacy, I wanted to try my hand at international advisory work. I always enjoyed domestic crime cases with an international dimension. For instance, I once represented a foreign prince in connection with death by careless driving proceedings. The nexus between immunities, extradition and the ordinary principles of criminal prosecution in that case left me with a lingering curiosity about the substantive law of other jurisdictions.

Come December 2022, I threw my hat into the ring for a Pegasus Scholarship. After an interview and advocacy exercise, I was lucky enough to be selected. The programme allows barristers with less than five years’ call to visit different common law jurisdictions for up to three months, the objective being to establish ties and exchange learning with like-minded professionals in those countries. I chose to veer off the beaten path and take up my placement in Pakistan, the country of my heritage. Part of my reasoning was sentimental: I wanted to immerse myself in the legal culture prevailing in the birthplace of my four grandparents. But my choice of destination was also academic: the study of common law in Pakistan struck me as relatively untapped (especially as compared with its neighbour India) and therefore ripe for exploration!

And so, I packed my bags and set sail. Towards the tail-end of 2023, I spent 12 weeks in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province. Under the auspices of the Lahore High Court, I carried out research into the criminal justice system in Punjab, visiting 12 cities and observing more than 300 criminal cases. I marshalled counter-terrorism judges adjudicating sensitive national security litigation, interviewed prisoners in custodial facilities and met academic anthropologists probing the operation of ‘informal justice mechanisms’ that hold sway in more rural areas of the country. My experiences gave me a sense of the soul of Pakistan’s legal institutions and a window of insight into their day-to-day functioning.

My final report – due to be published this summer – contains my reflections and recommendations following this opportunity. I am delighted to have been invited to deliver my findings at the Federal Judicial Academy, which is responsible for training the district judiciary nationally; and I am hopeful that my research will make a small contribution to the broader programme of criminal justice reform in Pakistan.

‘What you seek is seeking you’

So said Rumi, the legendary mystical poet. When contemplating my choice of chambers, I found his 13th-century words to ring true. Having practised from two sets before my current chambers, I had experienced a full spectrum of Criminal Bar traditions and innovations – ranging from butler-served afternoon teas to virtual clerking. For all these charms, it was at times difficult to reconcile my vision for my own practice with the ways of working at a conventional criminal set. For instance, I knew I wanted to forge a mixed domestic and international practice, combining traditional trial work with advisory briefs overseas. Capacity-building, criminal justice reform, rule of law development: there is so much an English barrister can become involved with in jurisdictions beyond ours. While this is more than possible for established practitioners, it always struck me that this portfolio work was reserved to the ‘senior statesmen’ of the Criminal Bar, beyond the reach of starry-eyed junior juniors.

Enter Guernica37. Here I found a dynamic and thriving young set whose members (at all stages of call) are regularly instructed to appear in the full gamut of international courts and tribunals, and whose clerking team intuitively understood my aspirations. The rest, as they say, is history. My practice integrated quite seamlessly into the matrix of Chambers’ machinery and I have increased my international instructions while maintaining an anchor in domestic crime. It is coming up to a year since I came aboard and I cannot be happier with my professional home.

Nosce Te-Ipsum

At every stage in my career, I have heard seniors reiterate advice to ‘just be yourself’. But to my mind, in order to be yourself, you need to know yourself first. It might sound trite, but the Bar requires us to be so much at once – advocates, advisers, leaders, juniors, colleagues and more. It is not improbable that, at times, we can’t help but step back and think: ‘where am I amid these various roles’? As a new practitioner with a BAME background and an NVD, I think I was particularly susceptible to this rather existentialist mode of thinking. In the end, my journey taught me a simple but important lesson. It is our own weltanschauung that gives shape to the kind of practitioner we become – not the other way around. As such, our starting point should be to know ourselves. Or in the words of the Delphic maxim inscribed at the Temple of Apollo: ‘Nosce Te-Ipsum’.