Features

Charles Hale and Toby Craig provide a round-up of Government debate and initiatives affecting the Bar Olympic Spirit 

It finally happened, the Olympics came to London once again. Winners and losers, heartbreak and joy, but whatever the individual outcomes the Olympic spirit continues to shine. Preparation, dedication, playing by the rules and above all else, fairness are the qualities expected of an Olympic athlete. Many would say they are the same qualities expected every day of members of the Bar, and not just every four years. The Bar has played its part in the Olympics too. A dedicated team of on-call barristers working pro bono via Sports Resolutions, the sporting dispute service, has been available throughout both Olympics to ensure fair representation of those caught up in disputes. A great example again of the Bar expanding its influence and work.   

Jo Delahunty QC and Kate Purkiss, leading and junior counsel for the first respondent and mother Chana Al Alas in the “Vitamin D and Rickets” case, examine the vital role played by expert witnesses and question moves to restrict their use in care proceedings 

On 25 July 2009, Jayden Al Alas Wray died whilst a patient at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH).  He was four months old. His parents were not with him because two days earlier they had been arrested at his bedside on suspicion of inflicting grievous bodily harm on him and they were prohibited from seeing him. The evidence of the parents’ alleged wrongdoing came from doctors at University College London Hospital (UCLH) and GOSH where he had been treated, and both hospitals attributed all his injuries to non-accidental causes. 

A wedding provides Chambers with a welcome distraction from current woes

July 9, 2012: “I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury” 
Groucho Marx 

There is a member of Chambers who has not featured in this diary hitherto. He is called Valentine Parr. His absence from it mirrors his absence from my life and the corporate life of Gutteridge Chambers. Until I saw him at Wimbledon at the weekend, where a very charming solicitor had invited me late in the week to the Ladies’ Final, I had completely forgotten his existence.

One thousand vessels sailed past the Queen on the Thames to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee. Max Hardy was on one of them...   

In 1612, barristers sailed down the Thames on the royal barge, accompanied by small boats and by musicians, in order to perform a masque in honour of the marriage of James I’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth. Four hundred years later, I took part in a similar ceremony to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Princess Elizabeth’s namesake and descendant. 

David Wurtzel on listening to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in a panel discussion on the rule of law organised by the LSE and the Burma Justice Committee.  

‘We cannot escape from the rule of law’, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi stated when taking part in a ‘roundtable discussion’ in a packed Peacock Theatre on June 19, during her historic visit to the United Kingdom. She was one of the six people who appeared on the panel and what she had to say was heard last. ‘I will listen’ she declared at the beginning. 

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 introduces contingency fees into main-stream litigation. Timothy Mayer considers whether this change also brings with it a potential adverse costs risks for lawyers where a claim is unsuccessful.
 

When Graeme Hall was asked to coordinate a project on death row in Uganda, he expected the prisons to be desperately depressing places. Little did he realise that the court room could be just as bad.  

In 2011, I was extremely fortunate to be selected by the Centre for Capital Punishment Studies (CCPS) to become the coordinator for a project on death row in Kampala, Uganda. CCPS is an NGO and research department within Westminster Law School which undertakes numerous pioneering activities globally in support of moves to abolish the death penalty. During six months in Uganda, I started a project which aims to increase the capacity of Ugandan defence lawyers representing those charged with capital offences (known as ‘state briefs’). This article offers a flavour of my experiences in a country whose immense beauty is mired by a brutal and bloody recent past, and whose justice system remains shackled by antiquated colonial laws, practices and prejudices. 

In a two part feature, Graham Cunningham looks at the new guidelines  on Information Security; in part 1, he examines the guidelines  regarding electronic devices.  

There is good news; and there is bad news. The good news is that there are only two or three barristers on the ‘ICO list’. The bad news, in these harsh economic times, is that you could be spending a lot of your increasingly hard-earned cash on paying administrative penalties to the Government. 

In April of this year David Green CB QC became Director of the Serious Fraud Office. Shane Collery interviewed him for Counsel 

David Green took up his appointment as Director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) on 23 April 2012.

After 25 years in criminal practice at 18 Red Lion Court, he was appointed Director of the newly-established Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO) in December 2004. A report by HMCPSI in July 2009 concluded that RCPO had succeeded in its key task of restoring public and judicial confidence in Customs prosecutions. When RCPO was merged with CPS in 2010, David became Director of the CPS Central Fraud Group, before returning to the Bar at 6 Kings Bench Walk in April 2011.  

Jacqueline Kinghan, Director of Clinical Legal Education at UCL Faculty of Laws, examines the continuing role of the undergraduate law degree in the light of the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR). 

The Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) recently published a discussion paper with suggestions for simplifying the structure of legal education and ensuring it is fit for purpose. The proposals – including whether to abolish the qualifying law degree – have re-ignited the all too familiar skills versus scholarship debate in legal education. Several leading academics have criticised the LLB as a poor combination of a liberal arts programme with arbitrarily-selected technical legal skills. In some camps, a graduate programme or Bar Exam like that in the US has been a suggested preferred course. Rebecca Huxley-Binns at NTU appears to favour the retention of the degree but proposes that the core subjects be taught around ‘intellectual professional legal skills’ such as drafting, writing, reasoning and commercial awareness.