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August 26, 2025 – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
The earliest confirmed sighting of Halley’s Comet was 240 BC. Its next sighting in the inner solar system will be 2061. It has been seen through history as a harbinger of great change, often of a dynastic nature. The equivalent of a comet in the Temple is the departure of a senior clerk and ours, Andrew, announced his to me last week. Heads of chambers are usually sorry to hear that their senior clerk is departing unless they have engineered it themselves. Both have been involved in a strange dance for years: loving and loathing, confiding and suspicious, loyal and treacherous. And all those terrible secrets…
A bust-up between chambers and their senior staff can have far-reaching consequences leading, in some instances, to the fall of the set or a major split. A friendly departure, on the other hand, particularly if the senior clerk falls below the retiring age is generally viewed across the piece as a brilliant move by a masterly head of chambers. Usually, of course, as with many legal victories, it comes about mostly by chance. A particularly worrying thing for the head that wears the crown is that, if the senior clerk’s departure is engineered by a rebellion of the juniors, nothing now stands between their wrath and the HOC.
So, it is with sadness, not unmixed with relief, that I can say Andrew will be retiring with the goodwill of Chambers and, I am sure, the nostalgic regret of the seniors. I felt it wise, nevertheless, to meet him in a wine bar near a major London rail terminus, just to check that he actually was leaving and that it wasn’t some gigantic bluff to be followed shortly afterwards by a wage claim or, worse still, that Andrew wasn’t off to one of our rival sets: another nightmare scenario for the boss.
I set out from my modest accommodation in central London, he from a capacious and grand property in a well-known beauty spot 30 miles away and by midday we sat on two bar stools looking at each other.
Over a few pints, we waxed sentimental. Me about the loss of Chambers as a place where people came in most days instead of working from home, the misery of Common Platform, the scandal of court facilities and the dreadful pay; he about the fact that the junior clerks now called younger barristers by their first names, the inability to contact list officers at court centres, the death of the old system of returned briefs being doled out in the clerks’ pub and the dreadful pay.
Andrew had been a junior clerk when I joined Gutteridge. I remembered him as a chirpy cheeky chappie with a mobile face that could change remarkably quickly. What I had forgotten, of course, was that he would remember the younger version of me.
‘Remember that awful suit you wore on your first day as a pupil, sir?’ Still ‘sir’ I noted. ‘Wasn’t that bad,’ I replied, somewhat hurt. I had purchased it under difficult circumstances in a clothes shop in my university city. It was a much trendier one (for its time) than the general run of men’s outfitters and I was served by a suitably modern-looking youth. The changing rooms only had half doors which swung back and forth with some ferocity. I found this disconcerting, particularly as the youth in question stood on a small ledge at the bottom of the doors, pushing them in and out while I was changing, asking: ‘Do you fancy a drink later?’ I may therefore have given the purchase and its intended use less attention than I should have done. I was confronted wearing it on pupillage day one by Barry, my first senior clerk, who said: ‘Lovely suit, sir. Go down a treat in the country.’ I threw it away.
Andrew continued in like vein. ‘And you couldn’t even find the Bailey from Chambers…’ ‘And, do you remember, you couldn’t get your wing collar on in the robing room because it was too stiff? And your pupil master told everyone about it when you got back to Chambers. He told us all how you blamed it on that strange first school you went to, where you had to take off your clothes and put them on again and then run down the school hall in a race.’
‘Another drink?’ I asked to interrupt this flow. ‘And you always came last. Oh yes, I’d love another half if that’s alright… William.’ An era had ended.
William Byfield is the pseudonym of a senior member of the Bar. Gutteridge Chambers, and the events that happen there, are entirely fictitious.
August 26, 2025 – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
The earliest confirmed sighting of Halley’s Comet was 240 BC. Its next sighting in the inner solar system will be 2061. It has been seen through history as a harbinger of great change, often of a dynastic nature. The equivalent of a comet in the Temple is the departure of a senior clerk and ours, Andrew, announced his to me last week. Heads of chambers are usually sorry to hear that their senior clerk is departing unless they have engineered it themselves. Both have been involved in a strange dance for years: loving and loathing, confiding and suspicious, loyal and treacherous. And all those terrible secrets…
A bust-up between chambers and their senior staff can have far-reaching consequences leading, in some instances, to the fall of the set or a major split. A friendly departure, on the other hand, particularly if the senior clerk falls below the retiring age is generally viewed across the piece as a brilliant move by a masterly head of chambers. Usually, of course, as with many legal victories, it comes about mostly by chance. A particularly worrying thing for the head that wears the crown is that, if the senior clerk’s departure is engineered by a rebellion of the juniors, nothing now stands between their wrath and the HOC.
So, it is with sadness, not unmixed with relief, that I can say Andrew will be retiring with the goodwill of Chambers and, I am sure, the nostalgic regret of the seniors. I felt it wise, nevertheless, to meet him in a wine bar near a major London rail terminus, just to check that he actually was leaving and that it wasn’t some gigantic bluff to be followed shortly afterwards by a wage claim or, worse still, that Andrew wasn’t off to one of our rival sets: another nightmare scenario for the boss.
I set out from my modest accommodation in central London, he from a capacious and grand property in a well-known beauty spot 30 miles away and by midday we sat on two bar stools looking at each other.
Over a few pints, we waxed sentimental. Me about the loss of Chambers as a place where people came in most days instead of working from home, the misery of Common Platform, the scandal of court facilities and the dreadful pay; he about the fact that the junior clerks now called younger barristers by their first names, the inability to contact list officers at court centres, the death of the old system of returned briefs being doled out in the clerks’ pub and the dreadful pay.
Andrew had been a junior clerk when I joined Gutteridge. I remembered him as a chirpy cheeky chappie with a mobile face that could change remarkably quickly. What I had forgotten, of course, was that he would remember the younger version of me.
‘Remember that awful suit you wore on your first day as a pupil, sir?’ Still ‘sir’ I noted. ‘Wasn’t that bad,’ I replied, somewhat hurt. I had purchased it under difficult circumstances in a clothes shop in my university city. It was a much trendier one (for its time) than the general run of men’s outfitters and I was served by a suitably modern-looking youth. The changing rooms only had half doors which swung back and forth with some ferocity. I found this disconcerting, particularly as the youth in question stood on a small ledge at the bottom of the doors, pushing them in and out while I was changing, asking: ‘Do you fancy a drink later?’ I may therefore have given the purchase and its intended use less attention than I should have done. I was confronted wearing it on pupillage day one by Barry, my first senior clerk, who said: ‘Lovely suit, sir. Go down a treat in the country.’ I threw it away.
Andrew continued in like vein. ‘And you couldn’t even find the Bailey from Chambers…’ ‘And, do you remember, you couldn’t get your wing collar on in the robing room because it was too stiff? And your pupil master told everyone about it when you got back to Chambers. He told us all how you blamed it on that strange first school you went to, where you had to take off your clothes and put them on again and then run down the school hall in a race.’
‘Another drink?’ I asked to interrupt this flow. ‘And you always came last. Oh yes, I’d love another half if that’s alright… William.’ An era had ended.
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