Chambers in 2021

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

disagreements, they can be put fairly to the client and debated. Marketing is no longer seen as opprobrious.

Third, chambers is a more diverse group than once was the case. It is no longer the preserve of white Anglo-Saxon men. Reference has been made above to the difficulties women originally faced at the bar.198 When Hilary Heilbron became chambers’ first female tenant in 1972, there were hardly any women at the Commercial bar, and women were often pushed towards family law. Today whilst there are still criticisms of the limited number of women in the higher echelons of the bar, chambers has eleven female QCs.199

Fourteen women practising in chambers have children of school age (or younger). Not a single woman has ever left chambers for childcare reasons. Although maternity and paternity leave policies are important, chambers has a reputation for being particularly female-friendly amongst the leading sets. Much of the credit for this should go to Helen Davies, one of the first female heads of a magic circle set and herself arguably the most successful woman at the bar today, who with Jemima Stratford, Maya Lester and others have championed the importance of diversity. Chambers has many leading female practitioners, such as Jemima Stratford, Marie Demetriou, Maya Lester, Sarah Ford, Victoria Wakefield, Sarah Abram, Sarah Love (and until recently Kelyn Bacon) all of whom have continued to practise whilst bringing up children.

Nor are an affluent family background and a public school education an expectation today. Bob Alexander, who came to the bar in 1962 in the then unusual position of having a father who owned a garage in Stoke-on-Trent, would take pleasure in seeing the number of members of chambers who derive from backgrounds that could not be described as affluent, who have been able to join chambers not because of their background but because of their outstanding ability. The top end of the bar is too competitive a place to be able to choose other than on merit. A day participating in pupillage final interviews is a humbling experience, interviewing the best fifteen, not only from this jurisdiction but also from Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and elsewhere, candidates

198 See p32 199 Having just lost one, Kelyn Bacon, to the bench.

who have not merely unbelievable academic achievements but also allround qualities of great distinction.

When Harry Matovu joined in 1989 he was the only Black barrister at the Commercial bar. Even now, it has very few Black members, and Harry remains the only Black member of chambers. Barristers from minority ethnic backgrounds now also include Jasbir Dhillon, who was one of the first Sikhs to take silk, Tony Singla, Charlotte Tan and Zahra Al-Rikabi amongst several others. Chambers is however conscious of the need to improve its profile in this area and this is work in progress.

It was long near impossible to succeed at the bar with a disability, notwithstanding that a wheelchair user was able to become US President in 1933 and Britain had a blind Home Secretary in 2001. Edward Ho is wheelchair bound as a result of a terrible accident when snowboarding some years ago, and manages a successful commercial practice, appearing regularly in court. One of chambers’ newest tenants is visually impaired.

The term LGBT+ would not have meant anything several generations ago, still less would chambers have welcomed those who associate with it. In the past if members of the bar were gay they tended to keep quiet about it. Now Brick Court has several LGBT+ members of chambers and positively welcomes LGBT+ applicants and prospective staff.

Fourth, the work of members of chambers, and particularly that of the senior members, is much more internationally based. The caseload always was international, but once was focused on the English courts. Of course there has in modern times always been Strasbourg and Luxembourg. But now members attend court or arbitrations in Bermuda, Cayman, the British Virgin Islands, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Gibraltar and sit as judges or advise on hearings in Jersey and Guernsey.

Fifth, recruitment is rather different. Fifty years ago it was a given that almost anyone who came to Brick Court had been rejected elsewhere first, and chambers succeeded through picking up top quality talent rejected by others. It was the recruitment of Bob Alexander and Nicholas Phillips that first propelled Brick Court into the premier league. It was the recruitment of top quality Euro practitioners that first propelled chambers into pole position in EU law.

Now recruitment is much more structured. From first application for pupillage, where Lyana Peniston continues to run the administration and

provides a first contact for pupillage applicants, to selection of tenants from pupils, since the 1990s chambers has prided itself on having a transparent and fair selection process both for both pupils and for tenants from pupillage. This is as important for the future development of chambers as lateral recruitment and although chambers continues regularly to pick up talent from other chambers, there is enormous home-grown talent throughout chambers, and particularly amongst our current juniors.

Pupillage is not an easy year: it is taxing and inevitably stressful, given the desire to secure a tenancy at the end. Those who have achieved the extraordinary academic success that our pupils invariably have cannot find it easy to have their work criticised (a feature of the fact that in this profession experience is important). But it is a stimulating year and pupils in chambers have always been well treated and looked after. Indeed, the quality of those arriving for pupillage is breathtaking. The competition for places is enormous, no doubt reflecting on the perceived desirability of a tenancy at Brick Court.

If those are the differences, what may be regarded as similarities?

First, chambers has always adapted itself to the changing areas of work and differing demands of practice.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the dominant feature of commercial work was shipping. At that stage, Brick Court was at the heart of shipping work, but when it faded, chambers moved on, to reinsurance work in the 1990s, then to the oligarch cases, the financial services and banking boom after the 2008 crash, immersing itself in the professional negligence boom when that occurred too. When offshore markets opened up, Brick Court was there. Outside commercial work, chambers quickly established itself as the dominant set in EU and competition law as soon as that work evolved, and played a central part in its development. It remains at the forefront of EU and competition work, with an enviable number of specialist practitioners. And when public law became increasingly important after the Human Rights Act, chambers moved into that area of work too.

Whilst the commercial practitioners appeared in arbitrations as they did in court, chambers developed a glittering array of arbitrators. Hilary Heilbron developed an arbitration practice before others, but now all of Lords Phillips, Hoffmann and Hope sit as do Christopher Clarke and Richard Aikens, Klaus Reichert and many others.

Mediation was a new skill developed twenty years or so ago, and with Stephen Ruttle, Bill Wood, Tony Willis and now Sue Prevezer spearheading the practice, Brick Court is for many the first port of call for commercial mediators.

What chambers has managed to do has been to handle the highprofile and complicated cases in each of its practice areas: there are plenty of low-value professional negligence or commercial cases, and plenty of run-of-the-mill public law applications, but Brick Court has always held itself out as the go-to chambers for complex and difficult cases in each of its areas of expertise.

Secondly, in the same way that his devils learnt from Jowitt, there is something incredibly stimulating and exciting about working with colleagues who include so many of the best and brightest. Having your draft rewritten by a Kentridge or a Sumption, or one of the leading lights of 2021, is an incomparable learning experience. Debating and discussing legal issues with such illustrious colleagues, working with, or being led by individuals of genuinely outstanding talent: in Brick Court one has the opportunity to see in court so many of the best advocates in the English-speaking world. The two current heads of chambers are arguably the most successful man and the most successful woman respectively at the bar today.

Finally, the tone and atmosphere of any business is usually set by a small number of the senior individuals. The ethos has always been hard work in a stimulating and enjoyable atmosphere, where individuals worked hard but relished each other’s company. George Leggatt said of his arrival at in chambers:

Coming to Brick Court was quite a contrast for me. I had spent the previous year in New York working for a law firm on Wall

Street. There I felt I was a very small cog in a huge legal factory.

The atmosphere was highly serious. There were very few jokes.

The competition among the lawyers was intense for who could bill the most hours and charge the highest fees to the firm’s clients….

Arriving at Brick Court from Wall Street was a refreshing contrast.

People worked hard but the work was much more interesting. And there were plenty of jokes.

The many members of chambers who have spent time first in other sets of chambers, or elsewhere, will recognise Brick Court Chambers as a conspicuously happy place, a dynamic environment where members of chambers are proud of their success. It has always been so.