Features

Some in the legal world are absenting themselves from the general handwringing, and planning instead how they can turn the uncertainty to their advantage. Adam Sampson examines the shifting legal scene  

As I write many lawyers are rallying around a “Save the Legal Industry” campaign while making dire predictions of job losses in the hundreds of thousands – and all within the space of a year. Ringing a similar death knell, the Solicitors Regulation Authority is telling firms to prepare for the worst and establish contingency plans for insolvency. At first glance, it would appear the four horsemen of the legal apocalypse are cantering ever closer, fed by changes to the legal market and the tightening of legal incomes. 

18 June saw a Bar Council sponsored Legal Aid Question Time being held at Church House to discuss the Government’s consultation paper.  Counsel’s David Wurtzel was there  

After 16,000 responses were sent to the Ministry of Justice, was there anything left to say about the Government’s consultation paper, Transforming Legal Aid: delivering a more credible and efficient system ? Apparently so, as the Bar Council sponsored Legal Aid Question Time  at Church House in London on 18 June. A panel consisting of Maura McGowan QC, Chairman of the Bar, Lord McNally, Minister of State in charge of Legal Aid, Andy Slaughter MP, Shadow Minister for Legal Aid, and Steve Hynes of the Legal Action Group, was deftly chaired by Joshua Rozenberg. In the hour’s session, he made sure that all the speakers had a chance to give their views and where appropriate to have a right of reply. Succinctness was duly rewarded. In the audience were lawyers, journalists, civil servants and students, joined by a wider audience following it live on Twitter. 

At a service of Choral Evensong in Temple Church in June, in honour of Magna Carta and to celebrate the Inns’ Amity, the Lord Chief Justice gave an address, which he summarises for  Counsel.  

"39. No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land

40. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice" 

Daphne Perry suggests ways to make a fleshy skeleton more appealing to the judge . 

Question: You are writing a skeleton argument. How long should it be?...
  

Job title
Chief Executive Officer, Parklane Plowden 

Parklane Plowden is a large set of chambers in Leeds and Newcastle, comprising over 80 members and specialising in four key practice areas: Personal Injury & Clinical Negligence; Family; Employment and Chancery & Commercial. 

Toby Craig watches the legal aid consultation drama continue to unfold  

Nobody’s going on a summer holiday... 

David Wurtzel and Professor Penny Cooper examine how to ensure the effective participation of vulnerable defendants in a trial  

On 12 October 2010, Jordan Dixon, along with two co-defendants, was convicted of murder following a trial at the Old Bailey. A year before, on Halloween, Dixon and the two others came across a young man and his girlfriend in a town centre. One of the other defendants took part of the woman’s Halloween costume, stamped on it, and then spat. When her partner remonstrated, he was punched to the ground where he was kicked in the head. He died shortly afterward. All three defendants landed a blow; medical evidence could not establish who had been responsible for the fatal one. The most compelling evidence at trial came from the CCTV images which were played repeatedly. The jury found all three guilty on a joint enterprise basis. When the matter came before the Court of Appeal in March 2013, Dixon’s appeal against conviction was upheld (R v Dixon [2013] EWCA Crim 465). The real legal interest in the decision though concerns the question of the effective participation in his trial of a vulnerable defendant and of the value of a Ground Rules Hearing. The authors attended the appeal. 

Michael Todd QC reports back from the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association Biennial Conference 2013, held in Cape Town in April  

It served as a poignant reminder of South Africa’s recent past, and the rebirth of that Nation, that lawyers from all over the Commonwealth should gather in Cape Town, in April this year, for the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association Biennial Conference. In many, if not most, of the jurisdictions which I visited last year as Chairman of the Bar, I was privileged to attend conferences and forums, the central theme of which was the Rule of Law. They were interesting, and often inspirational, conferences. There is no shortage of able, articulate and committed people available to speak on, or around, the subject; and it is absolutely vital that they should continue to do so. 

In a profession where reputations are prized and seniority is an obsession, the Annual Tournament of the Bar Golfing Society is a great leveller. Simon Goldstone and Guy Williams explain.  

The Bar Golfing Society has just played its Annual Tournament at Royal St. George’s, Sandwich. The tournament was won by HHJ Richard Bromilow (handicap of 5) 110 years after the first tournament was played down the ancient highway at Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club (Deal). This year’s Final was a particularly close affair, Bromilow beating Jonathan Furness QC on the 19th hole. The golf improved along with the weather as the week progressed. Taking place annually in Whit week, the tournament rotates between Sandwich, Deal, and Rye, with occasional forays to Hunstanton and Royal Birkdale. The standard of golf course is therefore uniformly high, each tournament contested on one of the best England can offer, and at substantially discounted rates. The standard of golf is considerably more mixed. Every entrant believes he or she has a genuine chance of winning; golfers of all standards are warmly welcomed; the tournament expects to see eagles and air shots equally. 

As scandal sweeps through the corridors of power again, Toby Craig surveys the political scene  

School for scandal
Fifty years ago last month saw the culmination of one of Westminster’s defining scandals, the Profumo Affair. On 5 June, 1963, Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, finally resigned from Cabinet, having lied about an affair with Christine Keeler. Sex, lies, espionage; it had everything. One might be forgiven for thinking that it would also serve as a lesson for the next generation of politicians, and the one after that, and the one after. But alas, when it comes to the lawmaking fraternity, scandal is never that far from the surface. And so it proved as the whiff of impropriety wafted through Westminster and Whitehall once more.