Practice Toolset

Andy Thornton explains the role played by the Mock Trial Competition in opening up the Bar as a career for so many – and the funding issues now faced.  

It is the fourth of December and the line-up of this year’s Bar National Mock Trial final has just been announced. 2,000 students in 160 schools across the UK, helped by 300 barristers and advocates and assessed by 90 judges have been reduced to 16 teams ready for the final showdown in Cardiff Crown Court on 22 March 2014. Please come and watch. 

Anne Fairpo, from the Bar Council’s IT Panel, on cybercrime and how members of the Bar should deal with identity theft.  

From time to time, your Bar IT Panel offer practical tips on how to handle certain issues of the day. This time around it is cybercrime or as expressed in more mundane terms, identity theft. In other words, someone’s pinched all the content from my website and is using it on their own website; they are pretending to be me; what do I do? 

David Thomas QC, LLD was the country’s authority on the law and practice of sentencing. Sir David Maddison reflects upon his life and how he revolutionised the courts’ approach to sentencing.  

David Thomas’s death on 30th September, 2013 marked the passing of the pre-eminent authority on the law and practice of sentencing in the criminal courts of England and Wales. His name was and remains known to almost every practitioner, magistrate, Recorder and judge dealing with criminal cases. He will be greatly missed by his many friends and admirers in legal and academic circles. 

Francis FitzGibbon QC and Abigail Bright examine how human rights law has been articulated and interpreted by the European Courts, the United Kingdom Courts and the British Government, and the political reality of “Bringing Rights Home”.  

Our law is saturated with human rights principles. It is almost impossible to practise law of any kind without at least a passing knowledge of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA). (The practice of politics is another matter.) The Act has had a palpable impact on relations between the State and the citizen in almost every sphere of interaction. 

One year on from its launch, COMBAR’s James Leabeater offers his views on BARCO.  

Barristers need to get used to considering and evaluating credit risk. Since January 2013 barristers and solicitors have been agreeing contracts with each other. For some, not much has changed. Under the BSB’s Standard Contractual Terms, for example, the solicitor is liable to pay barristers’ fees, whether or not the lay client has paid the solicitor. The solicitor takes the credit risk. 

Rhys Taylor, a barrister at 30 Park Place, Cardiff, explains how BARCO has worked for him.  

Sitting on my desk early last year was a print out from Carol Harris, with 13 attachments relating to something called BARCO, the new Bar Council escrow account. 

David Barnes, former Chairman of the IBC and Chief Executive of 39 Essex Street, offers a clerk’s view of BARCO.  

Under rules rC73, rC74 and rC75 of the new Bar Handbook, formerly known as rule 407 of the old Code of Conduct, the handling of client money is strictly prohibited for any barrister practising in England and Wales. But what does this mean to practitioners and their clerks in everyday terms? Well, simply put, whilst there are some exceptions, if the client has any rights to have any funds refunded which have been unspent, then you are handling client money. Avoiding this pitfall can be cumbersome and sometimes lead to you taking adverse credit risk or, even worse, losing new business, something none of us can afford in this climate. 

Our legal system is meant to be the envy of the world. Matthew Scott talks to Nigel Lithman QC about his battle to save the criminal justice system.  

Nigel Lithman QC, this year’s chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, is fighting what he believes to be a battle for the survival of a respected criminal justice system. What is more it is a battle that is having to be conducted on at least two fronts. 

Stephen Crowne, Chief Executive of the Bar, explains the new Bar Representation Fee and the works that it funds.  

I would guess that if you were asked to identify the highlights of your year, renewing your practising certificate wouldn’t even feature on a long-list. But it is vital to protect and safeguard the infrastructure which allows the Bar to continue to practise and develop. We want to make that process as smooth and as easy as we can for you, and to explain clearly what the money is for, and the value it provides. 

Adam Sampson explains the business case for good complaint handling...Not just because the regulatory rule book tells you to.  

Common sense tells me that taking complaints seriously, and striving for reconciliation when clients are unhappy with a service, is good for reputation. We are all consumers in one way or another, so we know that when, for instance, our energy provider tries to diddle us with a bill written in hieroglyphics, we will probably tell our friends and family to steer clear of them. That is, of course, unless they attempt to put their mistake right when we raise the issue.