Features

The Inns are alive with the sound of music. Vanora Bennett explores the world of the other dedicated professionals of the Inns of Court 

At about five o’clock on any day of the week, the Inns of Court will be busy with preoccupied men and women in black, trundling wheelie bags of documents back to chambers after a busy day in court. Yet even the most hurried barristers may slow and smile as they pass the honey stone of Temple Church. The sound that prompts this reaction is the pure treble voices of the Temple’s choirboys drifting out into the evening air – the other dedicated professionals of the Inns, still practising. 

A thriving music scene 

The Temple Choir – 18 boys serving an apprenticeship lasting five or six years, and 12 professional choirmen – is (in my possibly prejudiced view as the parent of a Temple choirboy) one of the most remarkable features of the thriving music scene at the Inns of Court. The CD released by the choir this summer – “The Majesty of Thy Glory” – reveals an extraordinary musical combination of poise and passion. The choir’s repertoire ranges from cantatas to Christmas carols. This might not be so astonishing if the only performers were the knowledgeable choirmen, building up their London singing careers – but it is an almost incredible achievement for the schoolboys who, whenever sighted in the flesh, dodging between long thin black-clad legs outside the church, seem to have nothing more remarkable than football or skateboards on their minds. 

Name: Lee Tyler
Position: Senior Clerk
Chambers:  2 Temple Gardens 

Desmond Browne QC discusses the rule of law in Zimbabwe today. In June 2010 Lord Steel hosted the launch at the House of Lords of “A Place in the Sun”, the report of a mission to Zimbabwe last autumn led by Mohamed Husain, the South African President of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association and myself. Accompanying us were members of the Bar Human Rights Committee (“BHRC”) (including Andrew Moran QC of Serle Court who wrote the report), and Dutch and Flemish members of Avocats Sans Frontières.  

It was not the first such report. In April 2004 five leaders of the Bar from around the world visited Zimbabwe and returned with a story of judges being driven from office or corrupted, and of a legal system subverted by the ZANU-PF government to frustrate the proper working of democracy and to cling on to power. 

Lord Justice Leveson explains the work of the new Sentencing Council 

Stephen Hockman QC argues the case for a written constitution 

As the deadline for nominations for the Bar Pro Bono Award 2010 approaches, Georgina Closs asks six previous winners – who have all made an outstanding contribution to pro bono work – what it means to win the Award.  

Each year, the Sydney Elland Goldsmith Pro Bono Award recognises the sets of chambers and members of the Bar who have made an outstanding contribution to pro bono work over the course of the year. With the nominations deadline for the 2010 award approaching fast, I interviewed six previous award winners – Andrew Walker, Michael Fordham QC, Keir Starmer QC DPP, Andrew Hall QC, Samantha Knights and Judith Farbey – to gauge their experiences of pro bono work and what it meant to win the Award. 

Are your chambers’ details being used in connection with online fraud? Caroline Kean and Rachel Barber advise on protecting chambers from uninvited and unauthorised association with bogus websites 

Beer: The Singular Case of Donoghue v Stevenson
Matthew Chapman
Wildy, Simmonds and Hill; Hardback (December 2009); £14.99 ISBN: 0854900497 

“You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour. Who, then, in law is my neighbour? The answer seems to be – persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called into question” per Lord Atkin. 

1876–2009
Edited by Louis Blom-Cooper, Brice Dickson and Gavin Drewry
Oxford University Press; Hardback (August 2009); £95
ISBN: 0199532710 

The Law Reform Committee wants to know which areas of law reform it should consider on behalf of the Bar, say Dan Stacey and Eleena Misra