Features

This summer’s production of Judgment at Nuremberg will put history and budding legal thespians in the spotlight. John Cooper QC meets the director, Sally Knyvette, for the inside story.  

When I walked into the rehearsal room at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, London, I found Sally Knyvette already sitting at the table waiting for the first audition to begin. I was glad that I was early for the interview, because had I been late, I instinctively felt that she would not have been pleased. I was right. “When I am working with people, I expect professionalism and that includes being on time,” she explained. 

William Byfield, Gutteridge Chambers

Hard times spawn a yearning for the luxuries of yesteryears and an unexpected flirtation

14 March 2011: Change and decay in all around I see: O thou who changest not, abide with me! ...

It is often said nowadays that the Bar is not the joy it once was - “fun” is the word actually used but it has a certain frivolous connotation best avoided in works of record such as this.  

Job title
Head of Chambers, 12 Gray's Inn Square

Qualifications
Admitted as a Solicitor in 1966. Appointed Silk 1997

CV
Chosen as one of the UK's "go to people" for international arbitration and was involved in the drafting of the 1996 Arbitration Act.  12 Gray's Inn Square starts practising as of 15 April and is one of the first examples of an alternative business structure (ABS) at the Bar.  

To have one woman as Master Treasurer of an Inn is an event; to have three in one year may be seen as progress. David Wurtzel salutes the new appointments

2011 marks the year in which at Middle Temple, Professor Dawn Oliver is Master Treasurer and in which at Inner Temple, Lady Justice Hallett is Master Treasurer and HRH The Princess Royal is Royal Treasurer. 

As it strives to ensure “excellence in advocacy” for all barristers in England and Wales, the Advocacy Training Council is finding itself with a rapidly expanding role as Charles Haddon-Cave QC explains.  

Advocacy is the defining specialist skill which sets barristers apart from other legal practitioners. The role of the Advocacy Training Council (ATC) is to help ensure “excellence in advocacy” by barristers across the whole Bar of England and Wales and to ensure they receive the best possible advocacy training and support at all levels. 

In the wake of Julian Assange’s ongoing struggle against extradition, Sarah Lewis questions the UK’s willingness to accept European arrest warrant procedures at face value

The case of Julian Assange has put the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) under the spotlight. As a mechanism by which wanted individuals can be extradited from one EU member state to another, the EAW has been hailed as a valuable and successful instrument, cutting the delays and red tape associated with traditional extradition methods that have, in certain circumstances, enabled criminals and those suspected of committing crimes to remain beyond the reach of the law. 

Felicity Gerry and Catarina Sjolin explain why they believe jurors should be made aware of the psychiatric effect of a sexual attack on the consistency of a victim’s evidence.

In February 2007, in Counsel, we suggested that the jury could be given a judicial direction on the psychiatric effect of a sexual attack on the consistency of a complainant’s evidence without the need for expert evidence (see “Inconsistent Victims”). Four years on, the signs are that Judges are starting to give an “experience shows” rape trauma direction. 

William Byfield, Gutteridge Chambers 

This is what we’ve come to ... no longer just having our fees cut to the bone, hitting the good and the bad alike, but being second-guessed by incompetents.

14 February 2011: 

“I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”  
– Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Act II, Sc II), William Shakespeare 

What differences have you found between being a tax solicitor and a tax barrister?

The differences are slight. Tax solicitors receive questions from clients or fellow members of their firms resulting in meetings and notes of advice. These mirror, effectively, instructions, conferences and opinions. Solicitors are probably inclined to be more commercial because, inevitably, they are aware of the importance of a transaction and the need to find a solution rather than just giving a view.

How many barristers, walking past Temple Church on their way from court to chambers, realise that they are eyeballing one of the most historically and architecturally important medieval buildings in London? 

The Temple Church in London:
History, Architecture, Art
Edited by Robin Griffith-Jones and David Park
ISBN 9781843834984; £30
The Boydell Press (available at Temple Church)