Practice Toolset

In the first of a series of articles from the Bar Council IT Panel, Jonathan Polnay addresses the issue of mobile devices and how they can be kept secure . 

Smartphones and tablets are no longer new technology. Solicitors and clients demand instant responses to e-mails. We think nothing of viewing drafts of documents on the go and suggesting amendments by return. This added productivity comes with added risks – significant security risks. 

The Blair Government dismantled our legal system overnight. The present Government has installed a politician as Lord Chancellor. Sir Stephen Sedley examines the consequences and warns of government’s growing practice of kite-flying.  

Writers on the British constitution have always faced the problem that, contrary to what Mr Podsnap thought, it cannot simply be held up to the light and admired. The constitution is simultaneously a description of how, for the moment, we are governed and a prescriptive account of how we ought to be governed. In both respects (the former much more than the latter) it undergoes constant change; and there are concerns, highlighted by the radical changes currently being made to the legal aid system, that the process may be accelerating into a critical and damaging phase. 

This year’s Young Bar Conference was always going to be a lively one. Max Hardy reports.   

Joy is a word very little heard in the Inns of Court and Crown Court robing rooms these days and a sentiment still less felt. It took Lord Justice Moses, as so often before, in a barnstorming speech to the Young Bar Conference on Saturday 5 October, to remind us all what being a barrister is really all about. 

Jane Hoyal was named Legal Aid Barrister of the Year at the recent LALY awards. Carol Storer shares the story behind her nomination and also that of the LALY newcomer of the year  

The Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards are now in their eleventh year. At a ceremony at the Globe Theatre on 2 July, the winners of the ten awards were announced. Lord Justice Andrew McFarlane presented the trophies and John Howard, former BBC journalist, compered the evening. 

Robert Francis QC considers what work there is for counsel at public inquiries  

On coming to the Bar most of us did not foresee the need to exercise our newly found skills by pushing post-it notes to another barrister suggesting questions for him or her to ask. Yet that appears to be the fate of many instructed to appear for a core participant at a public inquiry. Another activity at some inquiries seems to be careful self positioning near Counsel to the Inquiry for the benefit of the TV cameras. 

Derek Wood QC assesses the first phase of the Legal Education and Training Review, the June 2013 Report by the appointed Research Team, and examines its value.  

This lengthy Report was commissioned by the front-line regulators of the three main branches of the legal profession – the Institute of Legal Executives, the Bar Standards Board and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (ILEX, BSB and SRA)–who have established an overall Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) to consider the future of legal education and training in the light of the Legal Services Act 2007. The Report is addressed primarily to those regulators. It is the first phase of the LETR. The LETR itself had been prompted in large measure by remarks circulated by the Chairman of the Legal Services Board that the nation’s legal education and training system is “unfit for purpose” or “fit only for a bygone age”. The Report does not support these statements. The regulators, having received the Report, will consult their members on its findings. The BSB will ask the Bar for its views in due course. 

Designed to help applicants for Silk and judicial appointments from all areas of the profession, the Bar Council’s Mentoring Service for the Bar launches this month. Amanda-Jane Field explains  

This month sees the launch of the Bar Council’s Mentoring Service for the Bar. The idea began as a joint initiative between two Bar Council Committees, the Legal Services Committee and the Employed Barristers’ Committee. Supported by the Equality & Diversity Committee, it is designed to increase the number of successful applicants for Silk and judicial appointments from all sectors of the Bar. It builds on the many years’ work that the Bar Council has undertaken to increase diversity in the profession and in the higher judiciary. The service aims to put applicants for silk and judicial appointments in the best position they can be in, by providing an adviser to help analyse their skills and complete the evidence-based forms. 

With keynote speeches from the new Lord Chief Justice and from Lord Pannick QC, Saba Naqshbandi explains why you should attend this year’s Annual Bar Conference  

Key Facts
Date: Saturday 2 November 2013
Venue: Westminster Park Plaza
CPD: 6 points
Cost: Prices start from £125 

With frustrations common on both sides, Maura McGowan QC, Chairman of the Bar, investigates the process by which the Legal Aid Agency pays barristers, and Matthew Coats, its Chief Executive, explains the agency’s work and priorities.   

I do not generally suffer from paranoid delusions but I confess to a belief that any file in my name which arrived at the Legal Aid Agency was spirited away and hidden behind a filing cabinet for a few months before being dusted down in order to be rejected because I had missed a full stop. Having spoken to practitioners over the last year or two I have discovered that I am not alone. Why do so many of us think this is what is happening? Are they out to get us? 

Chris McWatters talks to Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division, about the modernisation of family justice . 

Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division since January, is in defiant mood. He has been tasked with a wholesale modernisation of family justice to reduce delay, the scourge of children’s proceedings. And he isn’t going to tolerate pessimism from family justice professionals who think that, for a variety of reasons, this just can’t be done.