Reviews

The Centenary of Women in Law at the Royal Courts of Justice and Celebrating a Century of Women in Law at the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple

• Personal Injury Pleadings Sixth Edition
• By Patrick Curran QC
• Publisher: Sweet & Maxwell (May 2019)
• ISBN: 9780414070776

Clarity is everything. The reason why this superb textbook has sailed triumphantly into its sixth edition is the ability of its author, Patrick Curran QC, to bring that essential quality to the table at all times. It demonstrates the necessary precision of proper pleadings and does so with real scholarship and excellent example. Sir John Mummery has identified the quality of this writing and he is right to do so.

The latest edition has 11 new chapters geared to today’s challenges in personal injury litigation and a complete revision of its structure and content. Valuable case notes are part of the mix and, for example, the way in which applications for relief from sanctions should be evidenced and pleaded. Even for those who do not stray often into its territory, it is a joy to use.

"The reason why this superb textbook has sailed triumphantly into its sixth edition is the ability of its author, Patrick Curran QC, to bring that essential quality to the table at all times"

Read also with joy the droll and sometimes colourful prefaces of previous editions, and the present delightfully nostalgic one (for the author has found in his old chambers, Farrar’s Building, a good place to revise this essential textbook; and long may his work thrive).

On the bench and out in the fields of play, judges and practitioners will find this an indispensable companion. For our judgments and our submissions can be built on solid rock and where we succeed, we have been buttressed by real erudition. Most of all, by clarity.

Reviewer: Nigel Pascoe QC is a silk at Pump Court Chambers and a member of the Counsel Editorial Board.

• Marked for Death
• Tony Kent
• Elliott & Thompson Ltd, Paperback edition (July 2019)
• ISBN 978-1783964499
  

I must confess to a weakness for a ‘grab-you-by-the-throat-won’t-let-go-only-one-of-us-is-getting-out-of-here-alive’ kind of thriller. Of its genre this is one of the very best. The natural child of Michael Connolly and John Grisham with a dark sprinkling of Ian Rankin.

The murder of a former Lord Chief Justice leads Michael Devlin QC and his partner Sarah Truman into the helter-skelter pursuit of the killer. Whilst Devlin is holding down his day job in some brilliantly realised courtroom scenes at the Old Bailey (I may well be stealing the cell-site cross-examination) Sarah Truman pursues hers as an investigative journalist who is onto the killer.

What follows is the drawing together of apparently disparate threads to create a very satisfying whole. The plot sprints along and caused the first genuine 3am ‘got to find out how this is going to end’ moment in many years.

The murder of a solicitor and then horrific events closer to home begin to reveal the identity of a killer who is, at every turn, many steps ahead of his pursuers. A genuinely clever psychopath has never been more realistically or chillingly realised.

The plot avoids narrative clichés and the twist is both brilliantly delivered and utterly unforeseen.

In this, his second book, Tony Kent has created a memorable villain worthy of Thomas Harris and yet grounded in a world completely familiar to those of us who work in the criminal justice system. His protagonists, in particular Devlin (with his flaws) and his erstwhile pupil supervisor, are definitely people I used to drink with in the Devereux.

This realism is no surprise. Tony Kent is a barrister of some 17 years who will be well known to practitioners in London and South Eastern Circuiteers, although not by the nom de plume. His first book, Killer Intent, was a bestseller and selected for the Zoe Ball Book Club. Marked for Death is darker and may well leave the readership of the Richard and Judy Book Club (for which it has been selected) a tad traumatised but it is an excellent addition to my favourite genre.

Reviewer: Craig Rush is a barrister at 2 Bedford Row.

For a quick escape from the daily grind, try an all-absorbing visit to the fully restored home and treasures of 19th century architect and master of design Sir John Soane in the heart of legal London

Under the Wig: a Lawyer’s Stories of Murder, Guilt and Innocence
Author: William Clegg QC
Publisher: Canbury Press (2018)
ISBN: 9781912454082

The great virtue of this utterly compelling book is that Bill Clegg QC tells it as it is. Now, in the terrible chaos engulfing a great profession and on his way to the top. A life of a top criminal advocate within a profession he loves and adorns, with many high profile cases well summarised. Written for the interested non-lawyer, it has an excellent structure of career progression and specific cases combined together, chapter by chapter. It reads like the man: direct, clear, properly combative, reasonable and devoid of artificial rhetorical.

Missing are detailed pen portraits of fellow advocates, but that would have missed the point of a book which sets out unambiguously to demystify and to inform. It will serve equally well for any would-be lawyers, who, like the author and many of us, did not have any inside legal connections before we began. Absorb with joy the advice on how to appeal to a jury and remember it. Cherish equally how to win the trust of a judge.

So of course the author tackles the questions advocates are always asked and the byzantine ways leading us from eating dinners, slogging through pupillage, keeping heads above water in practice to eventually, for the chosen, Silk. His range of high profile cases include Jill Dando’s terrible killing, the case of Michael Stone, War Crimes in the Balkans, Private Lee Clegg and the Phone Hacking trial. But it is his analysis and strictures on the ‘Trying times for Legal Aid’ which will resonate with so many readers. The insider’s view, persuasive for its obvious truths. Just a glimpse:

‘If you believe, as I do that everyone is entitled to a fair trial, it follows that every individual must have access to proper legal representation regardless of their financial status. Legal aid was designed precisely to do just that… For decades, the system worked well… the barristers defending [legal aid defendants] earned a fee that was independently assessed to be fair and reasonable full. This is no longer the case.’

And then all the reasons: a decade of government cuts… for lawyers have fallen out of favour with the Treasury. And other woes: court staffing has been reduced and the budget for maintaining the courts has fallen. Stories of leaking roofs, toilets that do not work and heating and air conditioning systems that are broken.

‘There is a general feeling of squalor that you might expect in a developing country (but curiously do not find there, because respect for the rule of law demands that the courts are properly maintained). Here, in one of the largest economies in Europe, that does not appear to be the case.’

There is much more to justify his conclusion: it is absolutely no exaggeration to say that the profession is in crisis. So it is and we should shout that from the rooftops. And the more that leading lawyers beat that drum, the better chance of reform. What would Jeremy Bentham make of our shoddy slide into mediocrity by default and wilful underfunding!

Now all of that may just suggest a faint partiality by your reviewer. Perish the thought. My independent verdict is that I have never read a more accurate portrayal of our profession. Buy it now.

Reviewer: Nigel Pascoe QC