Features

This year the Bar welcomed its first pupils under the Inns of Court’s Pupillage Matched Funding Scheme. Nathalie Lieven QC reports  

The Pupillage Matched Funding Scheme was set up in 2013 and has been very successful in helping numbers of students to qualify as barristers.  

The HELP Programme (the European Programme for Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals) supports the Council of Europe member states in implementing the European Convention on Human Rights at the national level.Simon O’Toole explains  

Over the past 20 years the international community has become aware of the deficiencies and gaps in political governance in states, the increasing power of transnational businesses, and the potential of businesses to affect negatively the rights of individuals. 

In the first of her quarterly columns for Counsel, the new Chief Executive of the Bar Pro Bono Unit, Jess Campbell, introduces herself 

The real picture: Sam Mercer explains what the Bar Council’s recent Snapshot research reveals about the experience of women at the Bar today and its recommendations for supporting long-term careers  

You may have seen some of the rather sensationalist headlines that greeted publication of the Bar Council’s new gender report Snapshot: The Experience of Women at the Self-Employed Bar  in July (The Independent : “Female barristers subjected to shocking levels of rampant sexism, says Bar report”, Law Gazette : “Sexism still rampant in the ‘children’s playground’ of the Bar”).  

After an eventful week in Parliament, Mark Hatcher looks at Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership triumph, the end of New Labour and the legal landscape of all the parties  

Who would have thought that two of the less well known members of the Commons’ Justice Committee in the last Parliament could or would transform politics at Westminster?  

Authors: Daniel Jones, Gregory Stewart, Joel Bennathan QC
Publisher: Bloomsbury Professional
ISBN: 9781780434636
Date: February 2015
​Price: £50.00 

The Harris Review report reveals some harrowing truths about life for young people in prison, as Stephen Cragg QC reports, with comment from Frances Crook  

At the beginning of 2014, I was appointed to the Independent Advisory Panel (IAP) on Deaths in Custody, providing independent advice to the government on deaths in prisons, police stations, immigration detention centres, mental hospitals and anywhere else where the state deprived people of their liberty. 

More needs to be done to safeguard vulnerable witnesses in the family courts, says Gillian Geddes  

Whatever family practitioners do next, I suggest they make it their highest priority to log on to The Advocate’s Gateway and examine the list of excellent Toolkits on the right of the home page. 

David Wurtzel reviews the latest play by renowned playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz which was showing at the Bush Theatre  

The Invisible  was written with the backing and help of the Legal Action Group, the Law Society and publicly funded lawyers.  

The government’s present proposals to replace the Human Rights Act 1998 are seriously flawed, says Dominic Grieve QC MP