Profession

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. 

As QASA, the assessment of advocates by the judges before whom they appear, is finalised, Lord Carlile suggests a scheme by which the judges themselves are inspected . 

All of us at the Bar have stories about the behaviour of judges. Many are about exceptional brilliance, kindness and courtesy: there is little doubt that the overall quality of the judiciary at every level compares favourably with any other jurisdiction in the world. It is not always so, however: for example, in my early days on the Welsh Circuit there was a ferociously able (both words used literally) judge who, while reaching the correct decisions, reduced not a few barristers to tears, and witnesses to jelly. The trial outcomes were rarely challengeable, but the means of reaching them were sometimes unacceptable. 

The new BSB Handbook is less prescriptive, focusing more on what the outcome of a rule should be, rather than trying to define how a barrister should act in every situation. Ewen Macleod explains  

The current Code of Conduct, which defines how barristers practise, was first created by the Bar Council almost a decade ago. While many rule changes have been implemented over the course of the last 10 years, its basic underpinning framework remained the same. 

Taryn Lee QC outlines the benefits of the Bar Placement Week initiative . 

If you were in court in London or Birmingham in July and your opposite counsel was accompanied by an earnest-looking youth, you may be forgiven for thinking “my goodness, solicitors are getting younger”. In fact, you might have been standing opposite a “mentor barrister” with their Bar Placement Week student. Bar Placement Week is an extraordinary initiative that places high-achieving Year 12 students from low income backgrounds with barristers from a whole host of practice areas across London and Birmingham. 

The theme of this year’s Employed Bar Conference was regulation. Melissa Coutinho takes a look . 

The recent Employed Bar Conference (EBC) was particularly successful this time, according to the feedback from those who attended. That the weather was good, the subject matter topical, speakers varied and the venue, the plush offices of Stephenson Harwood LLP, could not have hurt. The title of the conference: “Regulation: carrot or stick, here to stay” was designed to cover as many practice areas as possible, to reflect the diversity of the Employed Bar. Everyone agreed that at least some of the programme was particularly pertinent to them, but as usual, areas that were unfamiliar to many in their professional lives, nonetheless stimulated interest. 

Some in the legal world are absenting themselves from the general handwringing, and planning instead how they can turn the uncertainty to their advantage. Adam Sampson examines the shifting legal scene  

As I write many lawyers are rallying around a “Save the Legal Industry” campaign while making dire predictions of job losses in the hundreds of thousands – and all within the space of a year. Ringing a similar death knell, the Solicitors Regulation Authority is telling firms to prepare for the worst and establish contingency plans for insolvency. At first glance, it would appear the four horsemen of the legal apocalypse are cantering ever closer, fed by changes to the legal market and the tightening of legal incomes. 

18 June saw a Bar Council sponsored Legal Aid Question Time being held at Church House to discuss the Government’s consultation paper.  Counsel’s David Wurtzel was there  

After 16,000 responses were sent to the Ministry of Justice, was there anything left to say about the Government’s consultation paper, Transforming Legal Aid: delivering a more credible and efficient system ? Apparently so, as the Bar Council sponsored Legal Aid Question Time  at Church House in London on 18 June. A panel consisting of Maura McGowan QC, Chairman of the Bar, Lord McNally, Minister of State in charge of Legal Aid, Andy Slaughter MP, Shadow Minister for Legal Aid, and Steve Hynes of the Legal Action Group, was deftly chaired by Joshua Rozenberg. In the hour’s session, he made sure that all the speakers had a chance to give their views and where appropriate to have a right of reply. Succinctness was duly rewarded. In the audience were lawyers, journalists, civil servants and students, joined by a wider audience following it live on Twitter. 

At a service of Choral Evensong in Temple Church in June, in honour of Magna Carta and to celebrate the Inns’ Amity, the Lord Chief Justice gave an address, which he summarises for  Counsel.  

"39. No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land

40. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice" 

Daphne Perry suggests ways to make a fleshy skeleton more appealing to the judge . 

Question: You are writing a skeleton argument. How long should it be?...