Features

Natalia Rymaszewska and Julia Jones explain the benefits of the sponsored  walks being undertaken by lawyers all over the country 

The London Legal Walk is a superb opportunity to come together with fellow lawyers from across the whole profession, and to do so for a very deserving cause. I am looking forward to seeing many more chambers and in-house counsel teams joining us for this year’s walk in support of the great work of our pro bono and legal advice agencies 
Dominic Grieve QC MP, Attorney General  

Chief Legal Ombudsman, Adam Sampson, provides guidance on how barristers can best avoid complaints about costs. 

You’ll have heard a lot about new financial models for barristers. The topic seems to be the common theme of most journals at the moment. The thrust of it all I agree with; a decent standard of financial literacy seems fundamental to making sure the legal profession keeps pace with its more commercially minded cousins, especially if, as we are all regularly told, consumers are expecting more and becoming increasingly savvy. 

The Supreme Court is getting sporty in the run-up to the Olympics with a unique exhibition charting the history of the Games and the law. The exhibition, “Playing by the Rules”, will include memorabilia from the 1908 and 1948 London Olympics as well as interactive displays, panels and interesting artefacts.  

Ethics, anti-doping, branding, commercialisation and the role of the Court of Arbitration for Sport are all issues tackled by the free exhibition, which is open to the public from July, a week before the Olympics begin, until the end of September. 

Job title
Silk, 20 Essex Street

20 Essex Street is a long-established set of commercial barristers’ chambers with offices in London and Singapore. Members advise on all aspects of international trade, commerce and finance with specialist expertise in banking, shipping, insurance, insolvency, IT, competition, public international law, and European Community law.

As principal legal adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) from May 2006 to May 2011, how did you approach the role?

Legal professional privilege

The continued use of state powers to erode legal professional privilege must be stopped, as Nicholas Griffin QC and Gordon Nardell QC explain 

The state has the power secretly to listen in to the meetings you hold with your clients in chambers, at a solicitors’ firm or elsewhere. This surprising situation – and the troubling cases that have brought it to light – have led the Bar Council’s Law Reform Committee to consider state powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) and have prompted the Bar Council to campaign for a change to the law. 

A look at the battle tactics and power struggles that have governed the reigns of Heads of Chambers since the beginning of time...

March 11, 2012: “Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.” - Niccolo Machiavelli
 
March is the season of our Annual General Meeting. In times gone by this was a rather jolly affair in which we took rooms at leading London hotels and had a good old natter, followed by a decent lunch. There has, however, been a tendency to slum it in recent times. We have started hiring conference rooms with decidedly inferior cuisine or pokey little rooms in the Inns. However, the siting of this year’s meeting at a church hall in Hackney represented a new phase in our existence.

Having spent eighteen months examining the family justice system, the Family Justice Review, chaired by David Norgrove, reported their findings in November 2011. Stephen Cobb QC, Chairman of the Family Law Bar Association 2010-2011, studies the Government’s response. 

The creation of a Unified Family Court, a new Family Justice Board, together with significant changes to family law legislation, supporting regulations, and practice/procedure in the family courts, particularly in the field of public law, are all signposted by the Government’s response to the final report, issued last November, of the Family Justice Review (FJR). These obvious changes to the family law landscape are expected to be eased along by what may and indeed will need to be a cultural change to the delivery of family justice. 

Job title
Barrister, 7 Bedford Row

7 Bedford Row is a leading national and international set, providing expertise in family law, clinical and professional negligence, personal injury, crime, insurance disputes, employment, fraud, contract and tort, sports law, and regulatory and white collar crime.

Your practice has developed beyond “conventional” crime and regulatory to include professional disciplinary work, and you have recently been award the Bar Pro Bono Award for your work on the Bar Standards Board. How has this come about, and why is the BSB work pro bono?

My practice has always involved an element of disciplinary work, and I have represented a number of legal, medical, financial and sports professionals before the disciplinary committees of various regulatory bodies.  

Benjamin Greenstone questions whether the criminal courts are keeping up with new social media 

While working part time in a Crown Court as a logger and also while Marshalling, I have seen a number of applications to adduce evidence of bad character based on evidence gleaned from social networking sites. This most commonly takes the form of information about who the witnesses and/or defendants are “friends” with on Facebook and who they “follow” on Twitter. 

As protestors from outside St Paul’s Cathedral are evicted, John Cooper QC, counsel for “Occupy”, considers the law surrounding the case 

The legal importance of the judgment in The Mayor, Commonality and Citizens of the City of London v Tammy Samede and Others, should not be underestimated.  In the context of the international ‘Occupy’ movement, it  ‘lit the blue touch paper’ in what is going to be an ongoing development of the law of public protest and how it is reacting to new forms of demonstration. On 13 February 2012, the case continued in the Court of Appeal, before the Master of the Rolls, as Occupy argued that the decision at first instance granted disproportionate relief to the City and failed to take appropriate regard to the appellants’ Article 10 freedom of speech and Article 11 freedom of association rights (under the ECHR).