Features

Which lawyers have played first class cricket? Daniel Lightman investigates 

There is a long tradition of lawyer-cricketers. Perhaps the first was William Byrd (1674–1744). Born in Virginia, where his father was an early settler from England, he was sent to English public school and went on to be called to the Bar and join the Inner Temple. In 1704, on his father’s death, Byrd returned to Virginia to take over his family’s estates, and is said to have introduced cricket there. Between 1709 and 1712 William Byrd kept a secret diary, the entry for 25 April 1709 recording: “I rose at 6 o’clock and read a chapter in Hebrew. About 10 o’clock Dr Blair, and Major and Captain Harrison came to see us. After I had given them a glass of sack we played cricket. I ate boiled beef for my dinner. Then we played at shooting with arrows and went to cricket again till dark.” 

Book review
Felicity Gerry and Catarina Sjölin
Wildy, Simmonds and Hill, January 2010, £69, ISBN 0854900357 

Once a month, between February 1999 and April 2000—usually on a Thursday—a very disparate group of mainly middle-aged men and women met at Queen Anne’s Gate to talk about sex. Known collectively to ourselves—and to the Home Office receptionists—as the “Sex Offenders” we were the members of Jack Straw’s Steering Group, set up to review the law on sex offences. Essentially we were given a blank sheet of paper on which we were encouraged to set out a blueprint for a new sex offences law for the next generation or three. Our report “Setting the Boundaries” contained a total of 62 recommendations. It was published in July 2000. It formed the basis for the government’s Sexual Offences Bill, which received  Royal Assent on 20 November 2003 and came into force on 1 May 2004. Five years later the new case law is beginning to develop—and the books are starting to proliferate. 

Adrian Hughes QC and Steven Thompson discuss the Bar Council’s engagement with China’s rapidly developing legal market.  

Change in China has been rapid and extraordinary since the first visit of a Bar Council delegation 20 years ago. At that time, the Pu Dong commercial area of Shanghai was still marshland and the emerging Chinese legal profession entering only its second decade. Now, as the main image of Pu Dong’s financial district shows (see below), the landscape is completely different. 

Adrian Hughes QC and Steven Thompson discuss the Bar Council’s engagement with China’s rapidly developing legal market.  

Change in China has been rapid and extraordinary since the first visit of a Bar Council delegation 20 years ago. At that time, the Pu Dong commercial area of Shanghai was still marshland and the emerging Chinese legal profession entering only its second decade. Now, as the main image of Pu Dong’s financial district shows (see below), the landscape is completely different. 

How have practitioners responded to the Final Report? Counsel rounds up some of the comments made on the NLJ Jackson webcast 

David Greene 

NLJ Consultant Editor & head of the litigation & dispute resolution team at Edwin Coe LLP. NLJ Jackson webcast participant 

“A lot of solicitors get their business from referral fees, agencies and management companies. If they didn’t get that business you would probably find that they would have to go out and advertise and spend the money in that way, so I don’t think it is a straight game in terms of referral fees. 

Catherine Piercy wonders whether the advocacy training provided by the BVC and the Inns will stand up in court.  

When I was born, no barrister was taught advocacy and most people—I am told—did not believe that it could be done. I am very much the product of the “new world”, having undergone the Bar Vocational Course (“BVC”), my Inn’s advocacy training during my BVC year, and most recently the pupillage course. Is it true that my years as a practitioner—should I be fortunate enough to get a tenancy—will be spent unlearning everything I have previously been taught? 

The decision in R v Barker on child witness evidence in criminal cases establishes that the competency test is the same for children and adults, write Professor Penny Cooper and David Wurtzel.  

With the decision in R v Barker [2010] EWCA Crim 4 the matter of children giving evidence in criminal trials has, so to speak, come of age. On 1 May 2009 at The Old Bailey, Baby Peter’s step-father, Stephen Barker, was convicted of the anal rape of a girl, “X”, who was less than three years’ old at the time of the offence. She was four and a half years’ old when she gave evidence. X had been living with her mother Tracey Connelly, Stephen Barker and his brother. At the age of two years and ten months X was taken into care following the unnatural death of Baby Peter. X made disclosures to her foster carer of sexual abuse by Barker and subsequently to a child psychologist who was seeing her for the purposes of care proceedings. Six months after the first allegation she was interviewed on video under “Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceeding” (“the ABE interview”). The trial for anal rape of a child under 13 was postponed until after the murder trial in the Baby Peter case. X watched her ABE interview a few days before the trial; it stood as her evidence-in-chief. She was cross-examined by leading counsel for her mother and for Barker. 

Simon Chadwick highlights the issues for chambers to consider when recruiting a chief executive.  

There are 690 chambers in the UK. Of those 67 have a serving chief executive or a practice director. Due, mainly, to the simple business structure of a typical barristers’ set, the job titles differ. However both roles show a degree of overlap and in some cases the responsibilities are identical. 

Freya Newbery explains the issues surrounding career breaks for barristers and reports on the recent Bar Council “Managing Career Breaks” seminar.  

As part of its commitment to retaining women in self-employed practice, the Bar Council hosted an immensely practical half-day seminar, “Managing Career Breaks”, on 23 October 2009. The seminar provided practical guidance to both barristers beginning a break or planning to return to practice following maternity leave or a career break, and those in chambers—such as equal opportunity officers, clerks and practice managers—responsible for managing career breaks and helping returners to re-build their practices. 

Employment vetting law has been rewritten, warns Timothy Pitt-Payne 

In 2004, a woman (“L”) was employed by an employment agency that provided staff for schools. She worked as a playground assistant, supervising children during their lunchtime break. The agency applied for an enhanced criminal record certificate (“ECRC”) from the Criminal Records Bureau (“CRB”). The ECRC did not show any criminal convictions; but it disclosed that L’s son had previously been placed on the child protection register on grounds of neglect, and that he had been removed from the register after being convicted of robbery and given a custodial sentence. Soon afterwards she was told by the agency that it no longer required her services.