QC

Guy Richard Newey QC of Maitland Chambers has been appointed as an additional High Court judge in the Chancery Division to help with an increased workload. 

SECURING stability for the publicly funded Bar and the need for all barristers to modernise in the fast-moving legal landscape have been set at the heart of the agenda for 2010 by incoming Bar Council Chairman, Nicholas Green QC. 

The leading regulatory and commercial lawyer, who practises at Brick Court Chambers, told a Bar Council meeting in London that the pressures on barristers doing publicly funded work were ‘potentially devastating’. He said: 

‘Cuts in legal aid pay, and competition for prosecution and defence work meant that pupillages to train young barristers were drying up in many parts of the country. Experienced barristers were often now ‘sitting idle’. Young, female and black and minority ethnic (BME) members of the Bar were being hit hardest. 

The Bar has made great strides in recent years to improve diversity and equality in the profession. These very positive steps are jeopardised by recent Government cuts, which do nothing to make the profession a more attractive place to come for a student saddled with a substantial debt as he or she leaves education and training,’ 

He condemned recent cuts in family and criminal legal aid, contrasting Ministerial and civil servants’ pay increases of 1% with reductions of 18% in legal aid pay. 

In the profession’s strongest warning yet over the legal aid crisis, Nicholas Green QC said: 

‘When members of the Bar see civil servants and Ministers taking an 18% pay cut, then we shall be silent. Until then we shall challenge unfair and irrational pay cuts with the utmost vigour.’ As rates declined, the risk was that there would be insufficient advocates prepared to take on the cases. 

Emphasising that he sought a settlement with the Crown Prosecution Service over its rising use of in-house counsel, Mr Green said that in the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, Parliament had expressly envisaged separation between the charging authority and the person conducting the trial. 

He warned: 

‘Parliament has never sanctioned the creation of a nationalised prosecution advocacy service. The creation of such a body has profound implications. Advocates will spend an entire career in a prosecutorial organisation and they might over time become “prosecution-minded”’ It was no coincidence that recent Directors of Public Prosecutions had made their names as leading defence advocates. Mr Green told the meeting, ‘Public and Parliament should debate the issue ‘before mission creep becomes mission accomplished’. 

Despite his concerns, he emphasised that his goal was to unify the profession, whether employed or in private practice: 

‘There is far more that binds us than parts us. We share a single set of values and traditions and an agreement will help us to heal the rift.’
Turning to moves to liberalise the rules governing the Bar’s provision of legal services, Nicholas Green QC said that these were changes that could not be ignored. 

He said: 

‘We do not have available to us the luxury of Canute-like opposition’ Moves by the Bar Standards Board to permit partnerships between barristers and other new business structures were to be welcomed. A menu of options was emerging, including procurement companies that would enable chambers to bid for more contracts. 

‘Over the next 12 months the Bar must begin to examine its methods of working. New choices on the menu will not appeal to all. But for some they may be critical.’ 

Looking ahead to Lord Justice Jackson’s forthcoming report on costs, Mr Green said that there were important opportunities, beyond Conditional Fee Agreements (CFAs), to open up access to the civil courts. These included the mooted Contingent Legal Aid Funds, which could be resourced by a court award of costs on top of damages rather than from the claimant’s damages themselves. 

He continued: 

‘In future, all barristers would need to define themselves by what they do. We are still predominantly advocacy specialists. We are specialist advisors. We are still essentially a referral service. The Bar has always represented a pool of very high quality specialist advice. We have a strong ethos as a profession that our work is in the public interest. The cab rank rule and the fundamental acknowledgement of our duty to the Court are still very important. The profession has a stellar record of pro bono work.’ 

He foresaw in future, the Bar might consider opening its doors to all specialist advocates, including solicitor advocates. Nicholas Green QC said he would be introducing measures to improve the internal operations of the Bar Council and its secretariat, inparticular to improve communication with profession. A panel of experienced juniors would be drafted in to assist with the Bar’s representations to Government and more widely. 

A Bar Council group of experts in commercial and criminal law visited the Chinese cities of Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in early November. The first three cities were visited in collaboration with a delegation from the Law Society and the final city by the Bar Council group alone. The delegation, led by Adrian Hughes QC, held well attended seminars and roundtables which focused on international transactions and dispute resolution, and promoted the key role that barristers can play in such work. The Bar Council was pleased to welcome Chinese speakers, to give insight into the Chinese legal market and experience of English law. The barrister team also explained direct access and how to instruct a barrister, messages supported by Bar Council publications available in Mandarin. The delegation’s seminar programme was backed by the local bar associations, the Consul Generals of Shanghai and Guangzhou, the China-Britain Business Centre and the Zhejiang Chamber of International Commerce. The Bar Council is grateful to UKTI for assisting many of the barristers who participated in the visit through its Market Visit grants programme. 

The China sub-committee of the International Committee was pleased to welcome a delegation of nine office holders from the Tianjin Bar Association to London on 7 December. The Bar Council established a good relationship with the Tianjin Bar during a visit to the city in 2008 where it conducted a seminar on environmental law for an audience of about 100 local lawyers. The delegation was interested in strengthening the relationship between the Tianjin Bar Association and the Bar Council, learning about chambers management, meeting with some law schools interested in training young Chinese lawyers. To this end the delegation had meetings with Desmond Browne QC, BPP Law School, as well as a lunch with barristers in Lincolns Inn and a meeting at 39 Essex Street Chambers to learn more about the management of a commercial set. 

On 3 December the Bar Council’s international committee with the support of Outer Temple Chambers, COMBAR’s Africa sub committee, ChBA and the CBA, welcomed a delegation of Nigerian lawyers who were participating in a week long programme organised by the Law Society. The event began with a meeting to introduce the work of the Bar Council, the SBAs and barristers and was followed by a drinks reception which was attended by barristers with interest in Nigeria.

David Wurtzel meets Sue Carr QC, Chairman of the Complaints Committee of the Bar Standards Board, and discovers how the new complaints procedure is working in practice 

Under the Circuit Diversity Mentor Scheme senior QCs are the first point of contact for barristers interested in applying for judicial appointments or Silk. Desmond Browne QC explains what is involved.  

The Circuit Diversity Mentor Scheme was launched last year by my predecessor, Tim Dutton QC. The aim was to encourage the widest and most diverse possible range of applicants for the judiciary and Silk and appointment to the Attorney General’s Civil Panels. It was strongly endorsed by the Judicial Appointments Commission (“JAC”) which has amongst its statutory objectives “the need to encourage diversity in the range of persons available for selection for appointment”. 

THE Bar Council and the Law Society today published the report of Sir Duncan Nichol CBE’s review of Queen’s Counsel Appointments. 

The purpose of the review was to examine ways of improving the operation of the revised process for the appointment and selection of Queen’s Counsel in England and Wales, which is designed ‘to serve the public interest by offering a fair and transparent means of identifying excellence in advocacy’. 

PROFESSOR Dame Joan Higgins has been appointed as the new lay Chair of the Queen’s Counsel Selection Panel, replacing Baroness Butler-Sloss GBE. The Panel assesses applicants for the award of Queen’s Counsel, given to those who demonstrate excellence in advocacy in the higher courts, following an objective assessment undertaken by it. The Selection Panel is independent, and includes lay members, as well as senior barristers and solicitors. The full press release is available on the Bar Council website. 

TWO new lay members and a solicitor member have been appointed to the QC Appointments Selection Panel, and one new lay member has been appointed to the QC Complaints Committee. The appointments to the Selection Panel bring the total number of those on the Panel up to nine. Sir Colin Budd, former Ambassador to the Netherlands, and Helen Pitcher, the Chief Executive and Deputy Chair of IDDAS, a
company which specialises in mentoring and advisory services to senior executives, are the two new lay members of the Appointments Panel; and Razi Shah, is the new solicitor member of the Appointments Panel.