Features

Guy Fetherstonhaugh QC, the Chairman of the Training for the Bar Committee, expresses his enthusiasm for the new pupillage application system.  

I am long enough in the tooth to remember PACH (the Pupillage Application Clearing House), its eventual online successor OLPAS, and its spawn the Pupillage Portal. I also remember vividly the dissatisfaction in my Chambers with each: the un-user-friendly application forms; the lack of any ability to tailor the forms to suit each Chambers’ speciality; the draconian deadlines; the torrent of paper that should not have, but did, accompany the online systems. The goodwill that the Bar should have, and did, feel for its own system gradually evaporated. In 1997, 243 sets of Chambers used the system; by last year, that had reduced to 100. 

How can the British Spanish Law Association help your international practice? Sarah Lucy Cooper explains.  

The British Spanish Law Association (BSLA) was founded in 2001 by a group of British and Spanish lawyers including myself. It is one of a number of bilateral lawyers’ associations set up to enable networking across jurisdictions, something which with the benefit of Direct Access is becoming an increasingly important part of all of our practice. We were set up with the support both of the Bar Council and the Law Society and are one of a number of bilateral lawyers’ organisations. In 2001, despite apparently one million British people owning property in Spain, with the obvious cross border issues that arise as result, there was in fact no organisation set up for British and Spanish lawyers to come together. 

Sports Law  (Second Edition)
by Michael Beloff, Tim Kerr, Marie Demetriou and Rupert Beloff
Published by Hart Publishing, October 2012
ISBN 1841133671
£95 

Any lawyer interested in the field of sports law should have the Second Edition of “Sports Law ” to hand; its lucid, comprehensive yet concise exposition of the relevant jurisprudence is as invigorating as a cold blast of fresh air in a sweaty workout. It reads like a good opinion, in which the author has mastered his subject and speaks authoritatively, with the answer and reasoning set out clearly and succinctly. 

The study is coherent: first, the pre-competition stage; second, the competition itself; third, the aftermath of disputes and disciplinary measures. 

The pre-competition stage focuses on the institutions that govern sport, their relations with each other and those taking part, and how the rules that control participation are established. The international and European aspects of sports law are particularly expertly covered: players’ rights and transfers as well as the commercial exploitation of sport where Articles 101 and 102 of the TFEU are to the fore. A section is devoted to the protection of children in sport. 

Specialist Mercantile Judge, HHJ Waksman QC, explains how hot-tubbing, by saving time and narrowing differences, has a role in reducing costs under the new regime   

What is hot-tubbing?
Hot-tubbing is the colloquial name given to the process of taking expert evidence concurrently at trial. So instead of the expert evidence being taken sequentially, the experts go into the witness box together. This allows the judge and/or the advocates to question them on a specific point at the same time – and usually the response from one will be followed immediately with a response from the other. Sometimes they will make follow-up comments or even question each other but all under the direction of the judge. The actual procedure to be adopted in any given case may vary and is a matter for the judge’s discretion. The process has been likened to a structured dialogue facilitated by the judge. 

The Jackson reforms will bring about radical changes in civil justice. In the first of three features, Stuart Sime examines the balancing of costs and justice and explains the new rules  

1 April 2013 is the implementation date for a range of reforms implementing the key recommendations made by Sir Rupert Jackson in his Review of Civil Litigation Costs  (Final Report, Ministry of Justice 2009). These are the most significant changes in civil justice since the introduction of the Civil Procedure Rules in 1999. 

Neil Smith, Janna Purdie and Virginia Jones summarise the Jackson reforms and set out the key changes for practitioners  

On 1 April, Lord Justice Jackson’s costs reforms are due to be implemented and the effects will be keenly felt by all in the legal market. 

Toby Craig looks at an eventful month inside and outside the Palace of Westminster and the lessons to be learnt  

The Rise and the Fall 

What price success? Or, as Chris Huhne might be asking himself, what Pryce success? As the door of his Wandsworth prison cell clattered behind him, Huhne began to learn a lesson which few politicians (or citizens) have to suffer about the consequences of our actions. However, the tangled web woven, a tapestry of lies unravelled before a packed Southwark Crown Court as Huhne pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and his ex-wife, Vicky Pryce, was convicted, at the end of a second trial, of the same offence. Both were sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment, with very little sympathy expressed by Mr. Justice Sweeney. Moral judgments to one side, it is a sorry saga from which none of the parties emerge with much credit. With his political career in tatters, like Jonathan Aitken before him, perhaps Huhne will find a new cause to devote his time to after the humiliation of incarceration. 

Borderline Justice: The fight for refugee and migrant rights 
by Frances Webber,
Published by Pluto Press, October 2012
ISBN 0745331637 
£19.99 

Asylum and immigration law was described late last year, by one of its current leading barristers Colin Yeo, as “the hardest and most bitterly fought, most controversial, most convoluted, perhaps most poorly funded and surely most tilted legal battlegrounds between the individual and the state”. Practitioners nodding in agreement would do well to pick up Frances Webber’s lucid, compelling and often angry book. 

Formerly a barrister at Garden Court, she was part of a generation of activist lawyers who, since the 1970s, expanded the reach of public and human rights law into an area characterised by ever more restrictive decision-making and regressive politics. Whether battling the “culture of disbelief” in tribunals or arguing points of law before the House of Lords, she maintains that real advocacy means putting “the reality of clients’ lives into focus to judges inevitably insulated by their position of privilege and under political, bureaucratic and time pressure to see cases as purely intellectual exercises”. 

Rose Heilbron: The Story of England’s First Woman Queen’s Counsel and Judge 
by Hilary Heilbron
Published by Hart Publishing, October 2012.
ISBN 1849464014
£20 

The story of Rose Heilbron’s life, written by her daughter Hilary Heilbron QC, provides an inspiring account of her determination to succeed in a difficult profession. At the time that she began her career there were very few female barristers. She faced difficulties in obtaining pupillage as many members of chambers and clerks were reluctant to take on a female pupil. She began practice during the war years when many male barristers were away on active service. 

By the time they returned, however, she had become so successful that in 1949, at the age of 34, she became one of the first two women Silks. She undertook numerous high profile cases in both the criminal and civil courts. In due course she became the first woman appointed as a Recorder (of Burnley) and the second female High Court judge. 

The book highlights the difficulties that she faced and also describes the intense press coverage generated by the success of a female barrister coming to prominence over half a century ago. It is clear that this  was uncomfortable for her at times, but that she also used it to great effect in generating publicity for women’s rights. She combined this with railing against the social stigma of being a working mother. She did it not by strident feminism, but simply by getting on with the job in hand. 

Following the trial (and re-trial) of Vicky Pryce and the discussion on juries which has followed, Cheryl Thomas enters the debate and explains the world of jury research  

No one listening to the Today programme the morning after the first Vicky Pryce jury was discharged could have been more surprised than me to hear the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord MacDonald, state that it is impossible here to conduct research with juries about how they reach verdicts. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. I have been conducting just this type of research with real juries at Crown Courts in this country for a decade and am currently doing so. 

What did Lord MacDonald say?
According to Lord MacDonald: “In other jurisdictions, under controlled conditions, researchers are allowed to question jurors, to come to some conclusions about the way they are deliberating and how the process works. If you have a better understanding of that, then perhaps it’s easier to frame directions to juries that they will follow and understand.” 

He was right to say this information would be helpful. But he was wrong to claim that this kind of research cannot be done here.