CHAMBERS IN 2021 If Jowitt came to visit Brick Court in 2021, what would be his impression? First, Brick Court is now a substantial and sophisticated business. The four rooms Jowitt had and the eighteen members in the late 1970s have been succeeded by over ninety members, forty-five of whom are QCs (two more having been appointed in March 2021), plus a number of door tenants, many of whom sit as mediators and arbitrators. There are twelve clerks in all, under the supervision of the two senior clerks, Paul Dennison and Tony Burgess, with teams of IT, fee collection, administration and marketing staff, receptionists and a number of junior clerks. Many of those staff have been at Brick Court for many years. Chambers is run by the two Heads of Chambers overseeing the series of committees, with a written constitution. The bar is a much more serious place in 2021 than it was fifty years ago. In the 1980s, before witness statements, counsel would go into court with far less preparation, and by modern standards there was an element of seat-of-the pants about advocacy which is impossible today. However, it meant that members of chambers did a huge amount of advocacy and juniors appeared from an early age regularly without leaders in arbitrations, Commercial Court trials and in the Court of Appeal and developed a forensic dexterity in court. There are fewer such opportunities today. Historically, there were less big cases with large teams. Second, the relationships between the two branches of the profession are rather different. The bar was once a rather remote place, barristers having no real social contact with those who instructed them, and a formality in their relationships with solicitors under the guidance of strict Bar Council rules designed to avoid what was seen as touting. The conference or consultation was a formal occasion with the solicitor having no idea in advance what the barrister was going to say to the client. Now barristers and solicitors genuinely work in teams. The client does not want to hear disagreements between his various lawyers: it is much better that there is a discussion between solicitor and counsel before the meeting with the client at which differences can be debated, so that the client is given advice from all the lawyers, and if there are still
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