11 Essex Street

in part, outside the Temple. 11 Essex Street was a Georgian house with an attractive circular staircase running up the core of the building. The front rooms were beautiful and Bob Alexander took up residence in the first floor front room, where chambers meetings were held. There were by now about twenty members of chambers.

In 1981 John Phillips died tragically aged fortythree. A mildly eccentric but charming bachelor who was an outstanding croquet player, he used to play chess with his brother at lunchtime by telephone. When he failed to turn up for a conference Burley sent two of the juniors 11 Essex Street to his house in Barnes, where they found a quantity of milk bottles on the doorstep and called the police. He had died from the fumes of a burning washing machine and had been dead for several days when found.

Nicholas Chambers, a senior junior with banking experience, joined in 1980 from a common law set. Paul Walker joined in 1980 after pupillage, as did Andrew Popplewell in 1982. Andrew Popplewell had been Richard Aikens’ pupil when Aikens was in the basement of 11 Essex Street. Aikens had a term when he came up before Mr Justice Bingham every Friday morning on commercial summons day and lost them all. When Andrew ceased sitting behind Richard as his pupil and finally was on his feet as a tenant before Bingham, the latter very charmingly said “How nice to see you on your feet at last Mr Popplewell.” The large rooms in 11 Essex Street had small anterooms behind them, and Andrew

Popplewell spent not merely part of his pupillage but also the five first years of his tenancy inhabiting one of these tiny anterooms behind Christopher Clarke’s room, where the only exit was through the main room. If Andrew had not realised Christopher was going to have a con, or the con went on very long, this could lead to problems as there was no lavatory in the anteroom. Therefore on occasion Andrew unexpectedly appeared in the middle of a Christopher Clarke conference from what had seemed to the attendees to be a cupboard. But it did mean that in his early days he had the benefit of Christopher at close quarters – thus Andrew giving advice by telephone that his clients should issue and serve a writ he would hear a voice from the main room “don’t serve it, just issue it”.

Substantial briefs often arrived at short notice. Solicitors who expected a case to settle would delay delivery of the brief until the last minute. Thus it was not uncommon on a Friday afternoon to hear Burley say “Mr Phillips, two-week arbitration on Monday, papers down by 5pm” (that was a conversation actually overheard). That would be the first time the barrister had any knowledge of the case. It would mean a busy weekend. The lack of witness statements meant that you could spend time leading your witness through evidence in chief, on the basis of a rough proof, and to an extent pick things up as you went along. Andrew Popplewell as a young junior argued three five-day trials on consecutive Mondays – three busy weekends. On another occasion, Andrew had been told that his trial was bound to settle and had gone off for two weeks’ skiing. On the Thursday evening of the second week he learned that it had not settled after all but was starting on the Monday. It was Saturday night before he got back. On the basis of that somewhat limited preparation, he had to open the case before Mr Justice Sheen on the Monday morning. Of necessity he opened it extremely briefly and said he intended to call the ship’s master as his first witness. Notwithstanding the short summary of the case given in opening, Sheen helpfully commented that he thought it was a good idea to get straight on to the evidence.

Burley was involved in every aspect of chambers. Roger Buckley and George Leggatt, the latter still in pupillage, were instructed to get an urgent injunction in an industrial dispute to stop members of a union from blocking access to lorries trying to deliver paper to a

newspaper for its print run that night.89 This led to the following memo from Burley:

Clients were extremely angry at delay in serving injunction and nearly sacked [solicitors]. The delay is alleged to be due to Mr

Leggatt drawing up the Order in abbreviated form which was thrown out by the Order Room in RCJ. Solicitor says if young

Junior Counsel instructed and he is provided with a precedent from previous case the Order should be drafted in the manner required to take it immediately to the Order Room. After GL’s form of Order rejected it had to be re-drafted by the Solicitors, when eventually sorted out the lorries waiting to deliver paper had left and a print of the newspaper was lost hence Clients’ fury. Things had moved on by the time of Burley’s letter the following day to the solicitor:

Dear Sir, Further to your comments in regard to the delay in drawing up the order in respect of the above injunction, I have spoken to Mr Roger Buckley QC and to Mr George Leggatt and, whilst being very sorry indeed to hear that there were problems, they totally fail to understand how these could have arisen. In the first place the Judge approved and initialled the form of the Order as drafted by Mr Buckley and written up by Mr Leggatt and it was outrageous that in a situation of great urgency a Clerk in the Order Room should have questioned it. We have in fact retained in Chambers a copy of the Order showing the words written in at the request of the Clerk in the Order Room. …It is fully accepted that in urgent situations there is a heavy onus upon Counsel to ensure that all formalities are adequately dealt with but unless you inform me otherwise it does seem that nothing was omitted from the Order by Counsel and the Order Room’s insistence that something stated should be phrased in a more verbose manner cannot be a reasonable criticism of Counsel. I would therefore be grateful if this letter could be placed before your Clients in order that no unjustified blame is allocated to Mr George Leggatt.

89 The date of the application was 4th February 1985.

If despite my comments your Clients consider some reduction should be made in the level of fees I will await their comments with concern and interest and give most careful consideration to what they say.

Yours faithfully

R Burley

Senior Clerk

Burley’s ability as a fee negotiator was legendary. His son Christopher, who was a solicitor with a successful media practice with many pop star clients, found a way of negotiating fees with his father that others could not match. When Chris indicated he would like to use Christopher Clarke to represent Sting on a large case Burley commented, “You do realise that Christopher Clarke is a very senior, very successful, greatly sought after and expensive QC.” Chris asked the likely fee and daily refreshers. Having been given an extremely high quote, Chris said that obviously, being his father, he trusted him implicitly to charge a fair fee and that on this basis the fees quoted should be regarded as entirely acceptable. He then said nothing for several minutes. Then his father broke the silence, rather sheepishly explaining that he thought it would be possible after all for Christopher Clarke to accept the brief for a significantly lower fee.

A youthful Tony Blair turned up on the other side, led by his old pupilmaster Derry Irvine, in an arbitration before Cedric Barclay, one of the main figures in the arbitration community at that time, in New Orleans. Christopher Clarke and Peregrine Simon were led by Stewart Boyd, instructed by Zaiwalla, Boyd arriving at the very last minute having crossed the Atlantic on Concorde. Barclay insisted that the venue for the arbitration was moved from the inadequate hotel where they were all located to a smart hotel in the old quarter. Boyd kept referring to “lifting the subjects” (when the parties decided at the end of the negotiation that the “subject to contract” provisions should no longer be subject to contract) which led to some frustrated noises from Derry whose ignorance of what this phrase meant showed up his lack of experience of the shipping market and its terminology. Christopher and Peregrine might have taken rather more interest in Tony Blair’s submissions on

damages had they appreciated how his career would develop. Apparently while checking in at the hotel Blair tripped on Sarosh Zaiwalla’s briefcase and fell flat on his back although a photograph of the incident was lost to posterity.90

In another of Peregrine Simon’s cases the expert instructed by the solicitor had wrongly thought he was acting for the other side. The solicitor did not read the report when it was provided by the expert but just sent what was a wholly unfavourable report for his client to the other side unseen. A second expert was instructed but it was not straightforward to explain to the judge why the plaintiffs had served reports from two experts on the same topic and were only calling the second. Because of the expert problem, the other side were confident and had made no offer. Peregrine opened the case before Mr Justice Evans. After a few minutes of opening Evans said, “What I’m really interested in, Mr Simon, is the issue on the insurance policy, and I’d like to hear how your opponents put their case on that.” The first defendant’s counsel (not expecting to be called on in this way) made some slightly incoherent submissions on this for a few minutes, then collapsed in court whilst on his feet, having fainted. This was particularly alarming for counsel for the second defendant, who had not focused on the policy issues, expecting to rely on the first defendant’s submissions but was now in the firing line. The case settled at 90% shortly after lunch.

Alexander was in the early 1980s in his prime as the unquestioned star of the bar. Until 1980, his main rival was Tom Bingham, but after Bingham went to the bench his principal opponent was Lennie Hoffmann (who subsequently became a door tenant at Brick Court after retiring from the House of Lords to sit as an arbitrator). Until then, the top chambers at the bar were largely synonymous with the top shipping chambers. What Alexander and Burley did was to turn 1 Brick Court into a market leader as a commercial set which had expertise in shipping and not merely a shipping set. With the subsequent downturn in shipping work in the late 1980s this was hugely important. 4 Essex Court, 3 Essex Court and 7 King’s Bench Walk continued to specialise in shipping and insurance. Alexander was simply the man to instruct in the biggest and most important cases of

90 Sarosh Zaiwalla, Honour Bound (2019) Harper Collins p31

the day; the star advocates of the bar have invariably built broad practices where they are instructed more for their courtroom skills than for their specialist knowledge in the law or subject-matter of the dispute.

It was always said that Bob Alexander had two favourite juniors. If he wanted someone who could explain to him a difficult point of law, his choice would be Sumption. But Bob, for all his brilliant skills, was plagued by self-doubt and when he needed someone whose glass was always conspicuously half-full to encourage him, it was to Jonathan Hirst he turned.

The International Tin Council defaulted on its debts in 1985. Most of the Commercial bar were involved in the subsequent litigation91 which equalled the record in the House of Lords, the appeal lasting twentyfour days. Kentridge, Hirst,92 Sumption and Aikens were all involved. Aikens and Mark Littmann, who led him, decided that the House of Lords counsel’s dining room was too hot and used to lunch picnicking (illegitimately) in Black Rod’s garden.

Nicholas Phillips features in many of the important shipping cases of the early 1980s. Richard Aikens was a decade younger but fast building up a reputation. In the days before the Court of Appeal required at least one commercial Lord Justice to sit on commercial appeals, Aikens opened an appeal before two common law appeal judges who appeared to have difficulty understanding the point. When he referred to “the well-known Centrocon Charterparty Clause 9” Lord Justice John Stephenson gave up: “Mr Aikens, we think this appeal needs to be relisted before a panel of three with at least one Lord Justice with Commercial Court experience.” They said they would relist it the following week until Richard said that would be very inconvenient as he was getting married.93 In the same case, during the first instance before Mr Justice Mocatta, the judge had asked Richard’s opponent, Tim Young, where the location was of the port where the vessel had discharged. Young did not know. Richard had looked it up beforehand and was able to provide the answer. This led to

91 JH Rayner (Mincing Lane) Ltd v Department of Trade and Industry [1990] 2AC 418 92 Leading Cathy Otton-Goulder. 93 The Vik Frost [1980] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 560. Ironically, at the relisted hearing Lawton

LJ gave the leading judgment, a criminal and common lawyer with no commercial experience.

Mocatta’s comment: “Mr Young, if you are going to practise in this court you are going to have to learn where the ports are.”

Before the Master of the Rolls, Sir John Donaldson, on another occasion Aikens was arguing an issue of construction of an exemption clause.94 His opponent, opening the appeal, struggled when Donaldson took a new point and battered him with it. The appeal seemed over. Finally, Donaldson said, “I suppose we should see whether Mr Aikens is taking this point.” Mr Aikens said he was not taking it. The court seemed somewhat bewildered but, in reality, there was no possibility after that incident that the court would let Aikens lose the appeal. When asked about the concession afterwards he simply said that he thought Donaldson’s point was plain wrong.

As for the Commercial Court judges, Mocatta had retired and Donaldson been promoted. The judges were now Roger Parker, Andrew Leggatt (father of George), Tony Lloyd, Christopher Staughton, John Hobhouse, David Hirst and Robert Goff (all of whom were old Etonians) plus Tom Bingham and Michael Mustill (the minority who were not). Bingham and Goff in particular were outstanding judges before whom it was a pleasure to appear. It was to Christopher Staughton, who might have had a career as a baritone, that the witticism was attributed: “Has your lordship had an opportunity to read the papers?” “I have, but I have not taken advantage of it.” John Hobhouse was a brilliant lawyer who expected complete mastery of the papers from anyone appearing in front of him. Solicitors who might otherwise have argued Friday morning summonses themselves would always instruct a junior barrister lest they come up before Hobhouse. When Legal Business magazine conducted a poll of their readers for the best and the worst commercial judges, Hobhouse came second in the list of best judges and also second in the list of worst judges. He was a man who was completely straightforward and you knew exactly what you were getting, but you did need to spend twice as long on preparation when appearing before him as you might need before another judge. The problem was that those who did not know him or were not wholly on top of the papers found him a nightmare. Later Johan Steyn, Mark Saville and Anthony Evans joined

94 The Raphael [1982] 2 Lloyd’s Rep 42

the commercial judges (or replaced them as they were promoted), all from 4 Essex Court.

In the 1970s Desmond Ackner, possibly the best common law advocate at the bar in the 1960s and early 1970s, when sitting as a Commercial Court judge, commented on the fact that Alexander’s junior, John Phillips, was wearing a lightish grey suit: “Mr Alexander, I do not care for the colour of your junior’s suit: the Commercial bar is meant to be the cream of the bar and should dress as such.” But this was nothing compared to the Chancery judges, some of whom prized black letter law above all else, including being civil to counsel and giving the appearance of a fair trial. Some, such as Nico Browne-Wilkinson, Christopher Slade or Donald Nicholls were excellent judges. But there were others such as Jeremiah Harman, whose appointment showed the lack of judgment that was characteristic of the Lord Chancellor Lord Hailsham. Harman was that worst kind of judge: a clever man who used his detailed knowledge of the minutiae of civil procedure as a form of intellectual pedantry. A young David Anderson, not familiar with the man or perhaps some of the mores of the Chancery Division started his submissions in a crowded courtroom. “Who are you?” “David Anderson, my lord, for the eighth defendant.” “What are you doing there?” Anderson had failed to make it to the overfull junior counsel row and was addressing Harman from the solicitor’s row. There followed a discussion as to whether Anderson could be heard, not merely because he was legally presumed inaudible as being in the wrong row, but to make matters worse the plaintiffs’ counsel claimed Anderson’s client had not paid the court fee on issuing his summons, giving rise to what Harman regarded as another justification for the presumption of inaudibility. Few shed tears when Harman, whose exploits including kicking a taxi driver whom he mistook for a press photographer, ultimately resigned from the bench shortly before his retirement after he had delayed judgment on a trial for twenty months and the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial when it became apparent he had forgotten many of the facts.

At this time the main firms to instruct chambers were Linklaters, Norton Rose, Clyde, Ince, and Frere Cholmeley. Bill Park at Linklaters spent much of his time flying on Concorde while acting for British Airways. After him Christopher Style and John Turnbull were leading lights in the department. Norton Rose had both shipping and non-

shipping work. Their big figure was Peter Martyr, who went on to spend almost twenty years as managing partner of the worldwide firm. Martyr was an eternal optimist, and it was necessary to bear in mind when dealing with the client that he would have added at least ten per cent to the prospects of success given by counsel. Clyde was the firm of Michael Payton, a well-known figure in the shipping world, and the firm usually acted for cargo interests. Ince would often represent charterers. Frere Cholmeley had a large media practice and would come to be involved in litigation involving Apple and Elton John, much of it through Nick Valner.

The other leading shipping chambers were 4 Essex Court (now Essex Court Chambers), 3 Essex Court (now 20 Essex Street) and 7 King’s Bench Walk. 2 Essex Court (now Quadrant Chambers) had a largely admiralty practice. 1 Hare Court (now amalgamated as Serle Court) was a small top flight commercial set but did no shipping. Fountain Court had moved from 2 Crown Office Row in the early 1970s and had a mixture of common law and commercial work. Neither it nor One Essex Court, which was beginning to be seen as a top-flight set under Sam Stamler, nor 2 Hare Court (now Blackstone Chambers) did shipping work.

Thus 1 Brick Court had Alexander, Phillips, and Kentridge as topflight advocates. George Leggatt joined in 1985 with Richard Lord and Cathy Otton-Goulder after pupillage. Christopher Clarke took silk in 1984 and Nicholas Chambers in 1985. Richard Aikens and Jonathan Sumption took silk in 1986. Bob Gatehouse went on the bench in 1985, aged 61, the first Brick Court judge appointed since Sam Cooke in 1967. He sat as a judge until 1996 and died in 2002.

Mark Howard and Charles Hollander arrived from other chambers after a recruitment exercise at the beginning of 1986. Philip Owen somewhat curiously wrote to the heads of their respective former chambers to say how sorry he was for poaching them (or something to that effect). Unfortunately he got the names the wrong way round and told Charles Hollander’s head of chambers how sorry he was that Brick Court were taking Mark Howard and vice versa. The former’s head of chambers thought it was very funny, that of the latter very much less so.

In fact letter writing (perhaps not of quite this sort) was very much in vogue. If you were applying to strike out the pleading of another member

of the bar, the convention was that you wrote to the barrister to say so, thereby giving them an opportunity to correct what might have been an error or defect in the pleading. If you were taking a case over from another member of the bar, convention dictated that you write a letter there too (thus informing the barrister they had been sacked), in case previous counsel had fees outstanding which they might want now to call in.

The third clerk, Nigel Connor, had left to become a senior clerk in other chambers. Two new clerks were taken on, Tom Grove and Carolyn McCombe. Carolyn had been a partner in a small firm of solicitors, and had a Cambridge law degree, which made her rather different from most clerks. She was at that time married to Richard McCombe, then at the Chancery bar and subsequently Lord Justice McCombe – both of them curiously being born on the same day of the same year. She left in 1990 to become senior clerk in other chambers. Another joiner in the clerks’ room as a junior in the mid 1980s was Ian Moyler.

Bob Alexander became Chairman of the Bar in 1985. This led to a dramatic judicial review of the Lord Chancellor, R v The Lord Chancellor ex parte Alexander. Lord Hailsham had, in a time of high inflation, resolved to increase criminal legal aid fees by only 5% (those were the days…). The main argument was that he had failed properly to consult the bar before making the decision. In fact, and unbeknown to anyone at the time, Hailsham had supported a larger increase but it had been squashed by Thatcher, so he was not at all amused when Bob led the Bar Council to seek judicial review of his actions. Sydney Kentridge acted for the Bar Council leading George Leggatt. Nicholas Phillips was briefed for the Lord Chancellor, but Hailsham refused to put in an affidavit because he said that to reveal the discussions that had taken place would be in breach of his oath of silence as a Privy Counsellor. The affidavit ultimately put in (after Phillips had suggested to his clients that a previous Treasury draft was positively misleading) did not in consequence really address the issue. The Divisional Court consisted of the formidable trio of the Lord Chief Justice, Geoffrey Lane, Tasker Watkins and Peter Taylor. The court started off with a hostile attitude towards the audacity (as it was perceived in those more establishment-minded days) of suing the Lord Chancellor. But the correspondence read very badly for Hailsham and by lunchtime on the first day Sydney’s understated opening of the documents

had swung the court around. By the end of the day the court was breast high with him. When Sydney sat down on the morning of the second day and Nicholas Phillips stood up, the judges laid into Nick and the barrage continued over next hour or so. At lunchtime the LCJ adjourned the case over the weekend, effectively telling Hailsham either to throw in the towel or have an embarrassing judgment given against him. He duly capitulated, though not without a fight over costs, which the Bar was duly awarded. The only costs were the solicitors’ fees, as counsel were of course appearing pro bono. But Sydney and George did at least each receive a case of 1979 Bollinger champagne from the Bar for their efforts.

Chambers’ meetings were generally chaired by Alexander. His preeminence was unquestioned. On one occasion in 1983 he told a chambers meeting that he had persuaded a very important figure to join chambers but it was so confidential that it was necessary for chambers to agree before he could release the name. Everyone assumed he was speaking of Bob McCrindle and agreed immediately. When he revealed the name (it was in fact John Griffiths, see below) everyone said “Who?” On other occasions where a vote had been taken he would say: “Do the minority feel so strongly about their dissent that they would wish their views to thwart the majority?” He never received a “Yes” in answer to that.

Fees had risen significantly since the 1970s, although it is often forgotten that whilst the punitive tax rates of the 1970s had gone, the top rate of income tax was 60% until the Lawson budget of 1988 brought it down to 40%. The Observer wrote an article claiming that Alexander earned £1m a year. Alexander threatened to sue for defamation on the basis that the article was said to suggest he was ripping off clients. He offered to reveal his income if The Observer paid to charity the difference between it and £1m. The Observer apologised and paid his costs but declined to take him up on his offer.

One of Alexander’s most famous, or infamous, cases involved acting for Jeffrey Archer. The Daily Star had alleged that he had engaged the services of Monica Coghlan, a prostitute, in Shepherd Market. The paper had set up a sting operation at Victoria Station in which she was handed cash on behalf of Archer. In 1987 the jury accepted Archer’s version of events that he had never slept with her and was just paying her to shut her up. The trial is famous for Mr Justice Caulfield’s impartial summing

up in relation to Mary Archer, who had been called to give evidence for the somewhat spurious purpose of identifying a particular mole on her husband’s back:

Remember Mary Archer in the witness-box. Your vision of her probably will never disappear. Has she elegance? Has she fragrance?

Would she have, without the strain of this trial, radiance? How would she appeal? Has she had a happy married life? Has she been able to enjoy, rather than endure, her husband Jeffrey? The judge then went on to say of Jeffrey Archer:

Is he in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel round about quarter to one on a Tuesday morning after an evening at the Caprice?

The jury awarded Archer the almost unheard of sum in a libel trial of £500,000.95 Fourteen years later it became apparent that Archer had told a pack of lies and the answer to Mr Justice Caulfield’s last question was in fact “Yes”. Ironically Ms Coghlan had died in a road accident one month before the second trial. Mr Justice Potts was less taken with the fragrant Lady Archer, sentencing her husband to four years for perjury and perverting the course of justice, a sentence likely calculated as the longest sentence he could give without the risk of being appealed as excessive.96

Nick Phillips went on the bench in 1988, the start of a brilliant judicial career where he became in turn Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice, and ultimately the first President of the Supreme Court when it ceased to be the House of Lords in 2009. He returned to chambers as an arbitrator after his retirement in 2012.

Shipping arbitrations had often been held in the Baltic Exchange or similar venues in the City. But an entrepreneurial solicitor called Michael Kusel decided to diversify from the largely gambling licence practice of his firm, MJ Kusel, by hiring out premises in The Strand for shipping

95 Mary Archer has since said about her husband: “People ask me whether I have ever thought of divorcing Jeffrey. I tell them: divorce, never, murder, often.” 96 When at Oxford, Archer used to run with Michael Beloff. Their running partner was Jonathan Aitken, the former cabinet minister who, through what must be regarded as an unusual coincidence, also spent time in prison for perjury after lying during a libel trial.

arbitrations. These were very popular with the bar, not merely for the convenience but also because of the excellent lunches served. It was thought that Kusel probably made more money on hiring out arbitration rooms than from his legal practice.

However, by the late 1980s, the shipping litigation which had fed the Commercial bar for a generation had largely collapsed. It was always curious that there was so much shipping litigation. It was expensive: it usually involved paying three arbitrators, was expert heavy, and involved funding not merely commercial counsel and commercial solicitors but also insurers and P&I clubs. The sums involved were rarely that substantial. By the late 1980s many of the key points had been decided by the courts and there was much greater certainty in the law. The ports were getting much safer and also much more organised. Instead of letting the vessel sit outside port with its cargo of bananas rotting whilst the parties argued, increasingly they let the vessel discharge its bananas and argue about them afterwards. The big firms gradually moved out of shipping as it was seen as inadequately profitable.

In the 1980s the bar still had a monopoly on rights of audience in court although the free market instincts of the Thatcher government raised questions as to whether this should remain. The new Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay, had commissioned a report on the bar and its monopoly but in the 1980s the bar’s monopoly was still safe.97 The prohibitions on advertising were gradually being relaxed.

The old telex machine in 1 Brick Court had largely been made redundant in favour of fax machines. Personal computers were still in their infancy and chambers had two long-serving secretaries, Marion and Marianne who did all the typing. Burley generally regarded members of chambers as being the servants of the typists rather than vice versa, and all work had to be dictated as it was not convenient to the typists to receive handwritten work. No one had mobile phones.

In 1988 the RSC were amended to require witness statements in civil litigation, so there was considerably more paper in litigation. The size of the bundles of documents was increasing significantly. Judges now were expected to pre-read. In 1989 Sir John Donaldson, the Master of the Rolls,

97 The Work and Organisation of the Legal Profession (Cmnd. 570), 1989

issued a Practice Direction requiring skeleton arguments for all appeals. The Practice Direction stated that at the commencement of the appeal “counsel for the appellant will be expected to proceed immediately to the ground of appeal which is in the foremost of the appellants’ case”. Judicial pre-reading became the norm. Compulsory skeleton arguments followed in other courts.

But some of the formalities continued, particularly at the Chancery bar. Christopher Clarke and Charles Hollander were instructed by Linklaters for a joint consultation with William Stubbs, a senior old school company law silk, and senior in call to Clarke. Burley suggested to Stubbs’ clerk that as his barristers were very busy, might Mr Stubbs come to Brick Court? That was technically contrary to convention that the more junior barrister attended on the more senior. Burley was told it would not be possible because Mr Stubbs had a septic toe. By now Christopher had been in silk for five years or so. Christopher and Charles were invited to Stubbs’ chambers in Lincoln’s Inn the evening before the con to discuss the advice that the solicitors would be given. They were then treated to a lecture on the law by Stubbs who behaved as though they were both junior solicitors. The con was fixed for first thing next morning because of court appointments. However, Stubbs unfortunately missed his train (possibly because of the septic toe) and after waiting for him some time, and with the time available for the con running out, Christopher had to deliver (in rather more user-friendly terms) in Stubbs’ room the lecture that had been given the previous evening, with Stubbs arriving just as the con was drawing to a close.

That same matter also involved Sydney Kentridge. The client was Michael Edwardes, the scourge of strike-bound British Leyland which he ran in the 1970s, now of a South African venture called Minorco. After (very) negative advice had been received from Clarke and Stubbs, the great man was brought in for another opinion. This time the solicitors somehow managed to persuade everyone to attend their offices in the city (fewer problems with the trains perhaps). Burley had sorted a car and directions (a note setting out the junior’s responsibilities in ensuring the car reached Linklaters’ offices “CH: you are nominated as guide please”). Sydney’s advice was in very similar terms to that which had previously been given. But when the advice had been given previously it was seen as