Features

At the 2011 Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year awards, Marc Willers received the award for Barrister of the Year. He talks about the practice he has developed and in particular about his representation of Gypsies and Travellers

I was very surprised and truly honoured to receive the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year (LALY) award in 2011. It was a real privilege to be handed the award by Doreen Lawrence who has worked tirelessly to obtain justice for her son, Stephen, and in doing so has forced our society to acknowledge and address institutional racism. 

District Judge Nicholas Crichton has been described as “a family justice pioneer.” With funding for the Family Drug and Alcohol Court pilot scheme due to end on 31 March, he talks to Ffyon Reilly about its future.  

Nicholas Crichton has been the resident district judge at the Inner London Family Proceedings Court since 1997 and a district judge for 25 years. He chairs the Voice of the Child sub-committee of the Family Justice Council. He has worked internationally on various projects in the field of child protection, most notably in Bulgaria where he has visited all 28 family courts and visited many specialist institutions. He is a passionate advocate for children’s rights and was the driving force behind the setting up of the award winning Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) in 2008. I spoke with him at court early in January when the issue of future funding for FDAC was uncertain. 

Job title : Silk, Guildhall Chambers, Bristol

Christopher Quinlan QC practises from Guildhall Chambers, Bristol as a member of the Sports Law team. Guildhall Chambers was recently voted “Chambers of the Year” by Legal Week. Its 73 members (including 7 silks) offer expertise from within specialist teams also covering crime, commercial, employment, insolvency, personal injury & clinical negligence and property.

Graham Howard recounts his recent interview in Zimbabwe with the country’s minister of Education, Sport and Culture, Senator David Coltart.  

“Zimbabwe’s economy, although still in poor shape, has stabilised - inflation is down to below 4% and the economy grew 9% last year. Schools and hospitals are open again and life is gradually improving. Human rights abuses have lessened dramatically.” 

Senator David Coltart. 

Chairman of the Young Barristers’ Committee David Nicholls and  James Evans of the COMBAR Africa Committee report on their visit  to the Law Society of Zimbabwe’s Summer School in Nyanga.  

When I was asked by the previous Chairman of the Young Barristers’ Committee if I would like to visit Zimbabwe in order to launch the Buddying Scheme that has been set up by the Bar Council and the Law Society of Zimbabwe (“LSZ”), my first reaction was one of complete horror. For over 10 years, the only news from Zimbabwe has been dire: political and racial violence, endemic corruption, hyper-inflation and rigged elections have emptied the bread basket of Africa. 

Dr Sarah Krähenbühl explains what psychological expert witnesses can and cannot do in respect to children’s testimony

One police interview video shows a girl, 5 years old, who refuses to sit still, chatters happily and only occasionally answers the questions asked; another shows an older boy who answers in monosyllables and displays no emotion throughout the interview. In both videos, the interviewers do their best; they continue asking questions, try alternative techniques, remain patient but are clearly aware of the limited time available… 

Having spent the year after university working in a law centre in Birmingham, Emily Johnson examines the possible effects of the proposed legal aid reforms on the Law Centre Movement. 

On 13 May 2010 Liam Byrne MP, former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, somewhat ominously forewarned his successor that “there is no money”. The latest figures indicate that the UK has amassed a national debt totalling £770 billion, upon which it is paying interest at the annual rate of around £43 billion. 

Adrian Eissa and Ruth Barber
ISBN: 978 1 84766 707 6. September 2011
Publisher: Bloomsbury Professional. Price: £75

Even barristers of the very near future will look back with astonishment that their predecessors were still, in the 21st century, laden with kilos of textbooks as they set off for court in the morning.  Any exceptionally diligent criminal practitioner embarking for a confiscation hearing faces the Herculean prospect of dragging Archbold 2012 with supplement and Mitchell, Taylor and Talbot on Confiscation and Proceeds of Crime behind them.  Punishment not just for the muscles but also for the bank balance with RRPs of £455 and £342 respectively. 

David Wurtzel looks at the results of the Bar’s recent survey of the working lives of those at the Bar and sees what patterns have emerged.  

Who is a barrister? There are 15,000 potential answers to this question but a more focused one will be found in the fascinating and reader-friendly ‘Barristers’ Working Lives’, a biennial survey of the Bar carried out in 2011 by Employment Research Ltd and the Institute for Employment Studies and released in January. Nearly 3000 barristers answered the survey which is deemed to be a good representation of the population. 

Stephen Mason, Barrister, with a team of international contributors
Publisher LexisNexis. Price: £178.21
ISBN/ISSN: 9781405749121. April 2010

Paper is terribly last millennium. Relevant material now regularly exists on servers, laptops, mobile telephones and a whole variety of gadgets. Pressure for electronic service and presentation of cases is coming from a variety of sources, such as the CPS’ digital drive starting this April. For counsel to advise properly, there is a need to understand the workings of these little black boxes, not only so that challenges can be made but also so that such technology can be used to best present one’s case.