Practice Toolset

The Judicial Appointments Commission was created under the provisions of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 to select judges for courts and tribunals in England and Wales and for some tribunals whose jurisdiction extends to Scotland. Selections are to be made solely on merit from a broad range of candidates.  

Each year around 5000 people put in an application for the wide range of court and tribunal roles available – many of them open only to lawyers and serving judges – but also for a myriad of specialist member roles. Around 500 or so of those aspiring applicants will be successful and receive an offer of appointment. The diversity of these selections is improving – over 50% were women in our most recent set of published diversity data for both legal and non-legal roles (April- September 2013). 

Gerard Rothschild offers guidance on the administering of oaths in an increasingly secular society.  

Authorisation to administer oaths is a privilege expressly conferred by a barrister’s practicing certificate which is often overlooked. How to administer oaths features neither in the BPTC syllabus nor in the Bar Council’s Handbook. In an increasingly secular society, yet one whose legislation appears still to attach special importance to the taking of oaths, it is incumbent on those of us entrusted to administer them to ensure due formality so that their significance is respected. This article seeks to redress the lack of guidance. 

Andy Thornton explains the role played by the Mock Trial Competition in opening up the Bar as a career for so many – and the funding issues now faced.  

It is the fourth of December and the line-up of this year’s Bar National Mock Trial final has just been announced. 2,000 students in 160 schools across the UK, helped by 300 barristers and advocates and assessed by 90 judges have been reduced to 16 teams ready for the final showdown in Cardiff Crown Court on 22 March 2014. Please come and watch. 

Anne Fairpo, from the Bar Council’s IT Panel, on cybercrime and how members of the Bar should deal with identity theft.  

From time to time, your Bar IT Panel offer practical tips on how to handle certain issues of the day. This time around it is cybercrime or as expressed in more mundane terms, identity theft. In other words, someone’s pinched all the content from my website and is using it on their own website; they are pretending to be me; what do I do? 

David Thomas QC, LLD was the country’s authority on the law and practice of sentencing. Sir David Maddison reflects upon his life and how he revolutionised the courts’ approach to sentencing.  

David Thomas’s death on 30th September, 2013 marked the passing of the pre-eminent authority on the law and practice of sentencing in the criminal courts of England and Wales. His name was and remains known to almost every practitioner, magistrate, Recorder and judge dealing with criminal cases. He will be greatly missed by his many friends and admirers in legal and academic circles. 

Francis FitzGibbon QC and Abigail Bright examine how human rights law has been articulated and interpreted by the European Courts, the United Kingdom Courts and the British Government, and the political reality of “Bringing Rights Home”.  

Our law is saturated with human rights principles. It is almost impossible to practise law of any kind without at least a passing knowledge of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA). (The practice of politics is another matter.) The Act has had a palpable impact on relations between the State and the citizen in almost every sphere of interaction. 

One year on from its launch, COMBAR’s James Leabeater offers his views on BARCO.  

Barristers need to get used to considering and evaluating credit risk. Since January 2013 barristers and solicitors have been agreeing contracts with each other. For some, not much has changed. Under the BSB’s Standard Contractual Terms, for example, the solicitor is liable to pay barristers’ fees, whether or not the lay client has paid the solicitor. The solicitor takes the credit risk. 

Rhys Taylor, a barrister at 30 Park Place, Cardiff, explains how BARCO has worked for him.  

Sitting on my desk early last year was a print out from Carol Harris, with 13 attachments relating to something called BARCO, the new Bar Council escrow account. 

David Barnes, former Chairman of the IBC and Chief Executive of 39 Essex Street, offers a clerk’s view of BARCO.  

Under rules rC73, rC74 and rC75 of the new Bar Handbook, formerly known as rule 407 of the old Code of Conduct, the handling of client money is strictly prohibited for any barrister practising in England and Wales. But what does this mean to practitioners and their clerks in everyday terms? Well, simply put, whilst there are some exceptions, if the client has any rights to have any funds refunded which have been unspent, then you are handling client money. Avoiding this pitfall can be cumbersome and sometimes lead to you taking adverse credit risk or, even worse, losing new business, something none of us can afford in this climate. 

Our legal system is meant to be the envy of the world. Matthew Scott talks to Nigel Lithman QC about his battle to save the criminal justice system.  

Nigel Lithman QC, this year’s chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, is fighting what he believes to be a battle for the survival of a respected criminal justice system. What is more it is a battle that is having to be conducted on at least two fronts.