*/
Appearing in threads on Mumsnet while acting as Counsel to the Inquiry was a career milestone that I had not previously envisaged. Luckily friends from university, and those on the juniors’ WhatsApp group at 5 Essex Chambers, ensured that the posts did not go entirely unnoticed. Taking silk in 2011 and being made a Deputy High Court Judge in the King’s Bench and Chancery Divisions in 2020 are right up there as highlights, but knowing the impact that you have had on a woman from Bromsgrove cannot be beaten.
The manner in which you conduct yourself in legal proceedings is often seen through the lens of whether you comply with the rules of professional ethics, how you interact with your opponents and how you interact with your tribunal/the judge. But that is only really part of the picture. The extensive publicity that the Inquiry received (especially after [ITV drama] Mr Bates v The Post Office was aired in January 2024), particularly the live feed on YouTube, meant that the way the advocates conducted themselves was subject to scrutiny by a very broad audience: the Inquiry’s live feed was syndicated and has been watched by millions of people. The comments, and commentary, by members of the public on the way that I conducted myself in the Inquiry have been revelatory. First, they seem surprised that courtesy was shown to all witnesses, irrespective of the evidence they were giving. Second, surprise was also expressed at the apparent patience shown to witnesses, even when it seemed that a witness may not be answering a question asked of them. Third, the public was interested to see that examination of witnesses (in the context of this Inquiry) involves methodically and systematically going through a large volume of documentary material in order carefully to test and probe the account given by a witness – this is something which we obviously all do with witnesses on a daily basis, up and down the country, but the public seemed mildly shocked to understand that the process was as forensic as this. I think that this says something about a gap in the understanding of the public as to the work that we do in court. So, I think that the Inquiry may have helped to show people what barristers do day in and day out – we go through evidence with people and ask them questions about it. I’ve been doing this for 32 years, and no differently. There just happened to be a camera there in the Inquiry.
As ever, sound preparation is key to being able to examine a witness effectively. Those watching the proceedings often made comments (in emails and letters to me and, apparently, on X) about the nature and depth of the preparation that must have been undertaken before it came to ask the first question of a witness. They were right. Millions of pages of material had been disclosed to the Inquiry, and some 2.7 million pages of it had been disclosed to the Core Participants. We were not, therefore, short of documents: it was one of those cases where there was an embarrassment of riches. The real trick was to identify the important material.
A small team of counsel, dedicated to their task, worked well. I subscribe to the point made by the late Edmund King QC in his article How to lose a case that, in the context of litigation, ‘small teams beat big teams’. Our counsel team was rather smaller than the teams of some of the core participants. It allowed us to develop a strong esprit de corps, enabled nimble working practices and encouraged a broad understanding of all of the evidence (rather than becoming a specialist in a niche area of the Inquiry).
Having all counsel on the team undertake advocacy was good for the Inquiry, good for the counsel team and good for me. When recruiting barristers onto the team three years ago, I made it clear that everyone would be expected to undertake advocacy. For the Inquiry, it was important that a range of voices, and styles, was heard (we had a roughly equal balance on the Inquiry team – three men and four women). I believed that it was essential that all members of the counsel team were active advocates in the Inquiry. Although being a member of the Counsel to the Inquiry team is sometimes regarded as prestigious, it can in fact stifle career development (especially if the role is restricted to back office functions, like disclosure management – and I have seen that role being performed in some inquiries by a disproportionately high number of people with childcaring responsibilities). In our Inquiry, everyone undertook advocacy (including the most junior member of the team, Megan Millar, who was three years’ call when she took her first witness). I was therefore very pleased to see similar sentiments expressed by the Lady Chief Justice and the Heads of Divisions in Encouraging greater participation of junior counsel in courts and tribunals hearings in November 2023. Lastly, it was good for me: I could not have examined 300 witnesses in a two-year period (with some of them lasting three or four days).
It felt as if the work that we did was appreciated by those who were watching the proceedings: I rather hope that the Inquiry itself may have helped to restore some faith in the justice system. The process of exploring the issues, through careful and methodical examination of witnesses in public, and by reference to thousands of publicly disclosed documents, has hopefully reminded people that not all lawyers are bad.
It was important clearly and unequivocally to state at the outset of the Inquiry proceedings that the Inquiry legal team understood that, although the subject matter of the Inquiry included the operation of a computer system, this was not to be an Inquiry about a dry IT project that had gone wrong. We decided to modularise the Inquiry, partly because of the size of the task (an IT project running since 2000, undertaking billions of transactions a week, with thousands of sub-postmasters involved and hundreds of them prosecuted), but also so that we could devote time at the beginning of the Inquiry for two months of human impact hearings – in London, Belfast, Glasgow and Leeds – to put those affected at the front and centre, to hear people’s stories in a more relaxed and facilitative environment.
References
How to lose a case, Edmund King QC, October 2020
Encouraging greater participation of junior counsel in courts and tribunals hearings, Lady Chief Justice and Heads of Division, November 2023
Appearing in threads on Mumsnet while acting as Counsel to the Inquiry was a career milestone that I had not previously envisaged. Luckily friends from university, and those on the juniors’ WhatsApp group at 5 Essex Chambers, ensured that the posts did not go entirely unnoticed. Taking silk in 2011 and being made a Deputy High Court Judge in the King’s Bench and Chancery Divisions in 2020 are right up there as highlights, but knowing the impact that you have had on a woman from Bromsgrove cannot be beaten.
The manner in which you conduct yourself in legal proceedings is often seen through the lens of whether you comply with the rules of professional ethics, how you interact with your opponents and how you interact with your tribunal/the judge. But that is only really part of the picture. The extensive publicity that the Inquiry received (especially after [ITV drama] Mr Bates v The Post Office was aired in January 2024), particularly the live feed on YouTube, meant that the way the advocates conducted themselves was subject to scrutiny by a very broad audience: the Inquiry’s live feed was syndicated and has been watched by millions of people. The comments, and commentary, by members of the public on the way that I conducted myself in the Inquiry have been revelatory. First, they seem surprised that courtesy was shown to all witnesses, irrespective of the evidence they were giving. Second, surprise was also expressed at the apparent patience shown to witnesses, even when it seemed that a witness may not be answering a question asked of them. Third, the public was interested to see that examination of witnesses (in the context of this Inquiry) involves methodically and systematically going through a large volume of documentary material in order carefully to test and probe the account given by a witness – this is something which we obviously all do with witnesses on a daily basis, up and down the country, but the public seemed mildly shocked to understand that the process was as forensic as this. I think that this says something about a gap in the understanding of the public as to the work that we do in court. So, I think that the Inquiry may have helped to show people what barristers do day in and day out – we go through evidence with people and ask them questions about it. I’ve been doing this for 32 years, and no differently. There just happened to be a camera there in the Inquiry.
As ever, sound preparation is key to being able to examine a witness effectively. Those watching the proceedings often made comments (in emails and letters to me and, apparently, on X) about the nature and depth of the preparation that must have been undertaken before it came to ask the first question of a witness. They were right. Millions of pages of material had been disclosed to the Inquiry, and some 2.7 million pages of it had been disclosed to the Core Participants. We were not, therefore, short of documents: it was one of those cases where there was an embarrassment of riches. The real trick was to identify the important material.
A small team of counsel, dedicated to their task, worked well. I subscribe to the point made by the late Edmund King QC in his article How to lose a case that, in the context of litigation, ‘small teams beat big teams’. Our counsel team was rather smaller than the teams of some of the core participants. It allowed us to develop a strong esprit de corps, enabled nimble working practices and encouraged a broad understanding of all of the evidence (rather than becoming a specialist in a niche area of the Inquiry).
Having all counsel on the team undertake advocacy was good for the Inquiry, good for the counsel team and good for me. When recruiting barristers onto the team three years ago, I made it clear that everyone would be expected to undertake advocacy. For the Inquiry, it was important that a range of voices, and styles, was heard (we had a roughly equal balance on the Inquiry team – three men and four women). I believed that it was essential that all members of the counsel team were active advocates in the Inquiry. Although being a member of the Counsel to the Inquiry team is sometimes regarded as prestigious, it can in fact stifle career development (especially if the role is restricted to back office functions, like disclosure management – and I have seen that role being performed in some inquiries by a disproportionately high number of people with childcaring responsibilities). In our Inquiry, everyone undertook advocacy (including the most junior member of the team, Megan Millar, who was three years’ call when she took her first witness). I was therefore very pleased to see similar sentiments expressed by the Lady Chief Justice and the Heads of Divisions in Encouraging greater participation of junior counsel in courts and tribunals hearings in November 2023. Lastly, it was good for me: I could not have examined 300 witnesses in a two-year period (with some of them lasting three or four days).
It felt as if the work that we did was appreciated by those who were watching the proceedings: I rather hope that the Inquiry itself may have helped to restore some faith in the justice system. The process of exploring the issues, through careful and methodical examination of witnesses in public, and by reference to thousands of publicly disclosed documents, has hopefully reminded people that not all lawyers are bad.
It was important clearly and unequivocally to state at the outset of the Inquiry proceedings that the Inquiry legal team understood that, although the subject matter of the Inquiry included the operation of a computer system, this was not to be an Inquiry about a dry IT project that had gone wrong. We decided to modularise the Inquiry, partly because of the size of the task (an IT project running since 2000, undertaking billions of transactions a week, with thousands of sub-postmasters involved and hundreds of them prosecuted), but also so that we could devote time at the beginning of the Inquiry for two months of human impact hearings – in London, Belfast, Glasgow and Leeds – to put those affected at the front and centre, to hear people’s stories in a more relaxed and facilitative environment.
References
How to lose a case, Edmund King QC, October 2020
Encouraging greater participation of junior counsel in courts and tribunals hearings, Lady Chief Justice and Heads of Division, November 2023
Please complete the Barristers’ Working Lives survey this month to help shape and prioritise the Bar Council’s work
AlphaBiolabs supports children’s Hospice with £500 donation
Rachel Davenport, Co-founder and Director at AlphaBiolabs, discusses the company’s commitment to giving back to communities across the UK
By Kem Kemal of Henry Dannell
By Nick Bonnello and Aaron Young of RWB Chartered Accountants
By Kem Kemal of Henry Dannell
Animal sexual abuse is a distressing and taboo subject. Yet, write Christina Warner and Maya Badham, this hidden crisis, where legal, ethical and psychological factors converge, requires frank discussion
A cultural life and times
Maria Scotland and Niamh Wilkie report from the Bar Council’s 2024 visit to the United Arab Emirates exploring practice development opportunities for the England and Wales family Bar
Marking Neurodiversity Week 2025, an anonymous barrister shares the revelations and emotions from a mid-career diagnosis with a view to encouraging others to find out more
David Wurtzel analyses the outcome of the 2024 silk competition and how it compares with previous years, revealing some striking trends and home truths for the profession
