“For three-quarters of a million pounds per year, I’ll call anyone sir.”
May 30, 2017 1:48 PM Subscribe
It's a profession that dates back to medieval times and was established in its current form by the 1600s. It’s a trade that one can enter as a teenager, with no formal qualifications, only to end up earning astonishing amounts of money. Attempts at professional reform have been greeted with spittle and rat poison.
The curious world of the barrister's clerk.
The curious world of the barrister's clerk.
I love this.
posted by leotrotsky at 2:14 PM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by leotrotsky at 2:14 PM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
I predict the Barrister clerks to be replaced by robotic automation quite soon after the year 2525.
If man is still alive.
If woman should survive.
posted by Splunge at 3:07 PM on May 30, 2017 [21 favorites]
If man is still alive.
If woman should survive.
posted by Splunge at 3:07 PM on May 30, 2017 [21 favorites]
Interesting. I didn't know that about UK chambers.
posted by jacquilynne at 3:15 PM on May 30, 2017
posted by jacquilynne at 3:15 PM on May 30, 2017
Rumpole of the Bailey is a good introduction to this. A lot of it is really dated but the parts about how the courts work still hold up.
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:27 PM on May 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:27 PM on May 30, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm not sure the article really makes the case that the "reforms" to clerking are really an improvement. Yes, they seem to be opening the profession to more diverse backgrounds, but only to pay them substantially less. It's like the upper crust barristers got fed up and decided to put the rubes in their place under the guise of "modernizing" a "feudal" system.
posted by Panjandrum at 4:19 PM on May 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by Panjandrum at 4:19 PM on May 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
Fascinating, and very timely, since my wife and I are currently reading Trollope's Phineas Finn and trying to figure out what a barrister is and how the legal system works!
posted by languagehat at 5:45 PM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by languagehat at 5:45 PM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
I worked in and around chambers/barristers for three years as a librarian and it was fascinating. Especially when you see, as the article does, the difference between commercial and criminal chambers.
posted by halcyonday at 11:34 PM on May 30, 2017
posted by halcyonday at 11:34 PM on May 30, 2017
If you find this interesting you must watch Silk. Billy Lamb is absolutely superb.
posted by unliteral at 12:55 AM on May 31, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by unliteral at 12:55 AM on May 31, 2017 [1 favorite]
Eh, it's all a bit breathless and waits to the final paragraph to admit that clerking is a closed shop racket run by reactionaries. Traditionally it's been within the control of a few dozen Essex families and not much has changed to this day. Matrix and Doughty Street are the two most radically different Chambers of a profession which prides itself on establishment conformity.
Rather depressing that having won both the background and intellectual lotteries in life Gott chooses to make his living as an attack dog for capitalism. Treat also with very great caution the idea that eccentric barristers have no ide what they are earning. As someone who's spent a very great deal of money on counsel's advice and advocacy over the years let me assure you that almost without exception they are hugely money motivated - at least in the commercial space. There's a reason that barristers aspire to join the "Million Pound a Year Club" and unpleasant phrase sometimes heard in the gilded quadrangle of the Inns of Court. These are people who in the US who would go to the most elite white shoe, big law firms and earn simiar sums, and do similar work in time.
Also missing from this account is a recognition that 80%+ of barristers do very poorly remunerated publicly funded criminal law work. Singling out probably the second best set of chambers in the country, Fountain Court, makes for a colourful article but has as much to do with the rest of the advocacy world as does Akin Gump's government affairs practice to the work of a Montana DA's office. One of these things is not like the other. Mean earnings at the criminal bar maybe £90k but that's enormously distorted by wankers like Balbir Singh QC milking the system for badly prosecuted complex multi year white-collar fraud trials for which he bills in some cases millions of pounds.
Either way, I am imagine that my own prejudices are coming through loud and clear. Suffice it to say that in my opinion it isnot in the interest of the client that the UK legal profession is not unitary as it is almost everywhere else. While barristers make for a colourful throwback to the Dickensian, nay mediaeval, period the function of rule of law in this country is not supposed be guided by concerns of pageantry, as one sees from the Royal family and Parliament. We should be better than this.
posted by dmt at 4:08 AM on May 31, 2017 [13 favorites]
Rather depressing that having won both the background and intellectual lotteries in life Gott chooses to make his living as an attack dog for capitalism. Treat also with very great caution the idea that eccentric barristers have no ide what they are earning. As someone who's spent a very great deal of money on counsel's advice and advocacy over the years let me assure you that almost without exception they are hugely money motivated - at least in the commercial space. There's a reason that barristers aspire to join the "Million Pound a Year Club" and unpleasant phrase sometimes heard in the gilded quadrangle of the Inns of Court. These are people who in the US who would go to the most elite white shoe, big law firms and earn simiar sums, and do similar work in time.
Also missing from this account is a recognition that 80%+ of barristers do very poorly remunerated publicly funded criminal law work. Singling out probably the second best set of chambers in the country, Fountain Court, makes for a colourful article but has as much to do with the rest of the advocacy world as does Akin Gump's government affairs practice to the work of a Montana DA's office. One of these things is not like the other. Mean earnings at the criminal bar maybe £90k but that's enormously distorted by wankers like Balbir Singh QC milking the system for badly prosecuted complex multi year white-collar fraud trials for which he bills in some cases millions of pounds.
Either way, I am imagine that my own prejudices are coming through loud and clear. Suffice it to say that in my opinion it isnot in the interest of the client that the UK legal profession is not unitary as it is almost everywhere else. While barristers make for a colourful throwback to the Dickensian, nay mediaeval, period the function of rule of law in this country is not supposed be guided by concerns of pageantry, as one sees from the Royal family and Parliament. We should be better than this.
posted by dmt at 4:08 AM on May 31, 2017 [13 favorites]
I'm a barrister in a medium-size set of chambers in Birmingham; we do a wide range of work, including criminal law, family law and commercial/property disputes. I myself do mainly commercial and divorce work, having come to the legal profession at 40 as a second career.
That article is half-fascinating and half-frustrating, because it portrays for the most part an increasingly obsolete model of how barristers' chambers work. It's certainly not typical of what's often called the 'Provincial Bar', which technically is everything outside London but is often half-jokingly said to mean everything more than half a mile from the Royal Courts of Justice. For that matter, I doubt it's very representative of how many sets of chambers within the traditional precincts of the Inns of Court work.
Barristers' chambers did indeed all once work like that. I'm reminded of the description of the clerking system given by Sarah Caudwell in Thus Was Adonis Murdered, the first of her short series of novels set in a fictional set of London chambers:
Henry is the Clerk at 62 New Square. From references which will from time to time be made to him some of my readers, unfamiliar with the system, may infer that Selena and the rest are employed by Henry under a contract more or less equivalent of one of personal servitude. I should explain that this is not the case: they employ Henry. It is Henry's function, in exchange for ten per cent of their earnings, to deal on their behalf with the outside world: to administer, manage and negotiate; to extol their merits, gloss over their failings, justify their fees and extenuate their delays; to flatter those clients whose patronage is most lucrative; to write reproachfully to those who delay payment for more than two years or so; to promise with equal conviction in the same morning that six separate sets of papers will be the first to receive attention.
Now yes, our clerking team do all of that, and I'm abundantly grateful for it! But, as in most modern sets, they are on a salary-plus-bonus scheme rather than a percentage of profits, and rather than a Senior Clerk running chambers we have a professional business manager directed by a management committee that's itself elected by and from within chambers' membership. Recruitment as a clerk these days is often from paralegals or the administrative staff of the Court Service, although experience is very valued so once you enter the profession you tend to stay there.
I have to accept that if you wanted to set up a legal profession from scratch you probably wouldn't split it into two career paths. There are historical reasons we ended up like that, with trial advocates emerging first and becoming barristers, and specialists in case handling and preparation coming along later (solicitors). But these days many solicitors have higher rights of audience, allowing them to appear directly in court, and much of my work is in drafting advice or case documents, although I'm still on my feet in court two or three times a week on average. The system does have its advantages though, in that a relatively small law firm can instruct counsel of whatever specialism or level of expertise is needed rather than having to maintain those skills in-house, or can brief local counsel to represent their client at a hearing the other end of the country rather than have to travel themselves.
That article also represents a look at the extreme tail of the distribution of incomes. Potential earnings at a top commercial set in London can be very high, but that only represents a small fraction of the English Bar. Those of us who spend our working lives arguing about £25k of allegedly defective components, or whether a suburban fence should be a yard to the north of where it is, or how to divide the assets of a middle-aged middle-class couple, are on rather less impressive remuneration (although I will not for a moment pretend that I am not well-off in general terms). My colleagues who rely on the fees paid in criminal defence and prosecution work are very much at the opposite end of the earnings distribution curve from the barristers seen in that article. We are all painfully aware of what we earn, because we are self-employed and have to account for it, and have to make sure that we keep enough aside to meet expenses (as a guideline, I need to set aside 25% of my fee income as expenses, and that's after I've set aside the VAT I have to charge and then pay over to HMRC) and then pay UK tax rates on what's left. (Which, as a staunch supporter of the NHS, I don't begrudge at all, but I have no choice about paying it.)
In short, that's no doubt an interesting look at the English Bar, but it's not a very representative one and is set to become less so.
posted by Major Clanger at 6:16 AM on May 31, 2017 [23 favorites]
That article is half-fascinating and half-frustrating, because it portrays for the most part an increasingly obsolete model of how barristers' chambers work. It's certainly not typical of what's often called the 'Provincial Bar', which technically is everything outside London but is often half-jokingly said to mean everything more than half a mile from the Royal Courts of Justice. For that matter, I doubt it's very representative of how many sets of chambers within the traditional precincts of the Inns of Court work.
Barristers' chambers did indeed all once work like that. I'm reminded of the description of the clerking system given by Sarah Caudwell in Thus Was Adonis Murdered, the first of her short series of novels set in a fictional set of London chambers:
Henry is the Clerk at 62 New Square. From references which will from time to time be made to him some of my readers, unfamiliar with the system, may infer that Selena and the rest are employed by Henry under a contract more or less equivalent of one of personal servitude. I should explain that this is not the case: they employ Henry. It is Henry's function, in exchange for ten per cent of their earnings, to deal on their behalf with the outside world: to administer, manage and negotiate; to extol their merits, gloss over their failings, justify their fees and extenuate their delays; to flatter those clients whose patronage is most lucrative; to write reproachfully to those who delay payment for more than two years or so; to promise with equal conviction in the same morning that six separate sets of papers will be the first to receive attention.
Now yes, our clerking team do all of that, and I'm abundantly grateful for it! But, as in most modern sets, they are on a salary-plus-bonus scheme rather than a percentage of profits, and rather than a Senior Clerk running chambers we have a professional business manager directed by a management committee that's itself elected by and from within chambers' membership. Recruitment as a clerk these days is often from paralegals or the administrative staff of the Court Service, although experience is very valued so once you enter the profession you tend to stay there.
I have to accept that if you wanted to set up a legal profession from scratch you probably wouldn't split it into two career paths. There are historical reasons we ended up like that, with trial advocates emerging first and becoming barristers, and specialists in case handling and preparation coming along later (solicitors). But these days many solicitors have higher rights of audience, allowing them to appear directly in court, and much of my work is in drafting advice or case documents, although I'm still on my feet in court two or three times a week on average. The system does have its advantages though, in that a relatively small law firm can instruct counsel of whatever specialism or level of expertise is needed rather than having to maintain those skills in-house, or can brief local counsel to represent their client at a hearing the other end of the country rather than have to travel themselves.
That article also represents a look at the extreme tail of the distribution of incomes. Potential earnings at a top commercial set in London can be very high, but that only represents a small fraction of the English Bar. Those of us who spend our working lives arguing about £25k of allegedly defective components, or whether a suburban fence should be a yard to the north of where it is, or how to divide the assets of a middle-aged middle-class couple, are on rather less impressive remuneration (although I will not for a moment pretend that I am not well-off in general terms). My colleagues who rely on the fees paid in criminal defence and prosecution work are very much at the opposite end of the earnings distribution curve from the barristers seen in that article. We are all painfully aware of what we earn, because we are self-employed and have to account for it, and have to make sure that we keep enough aside to meet expenses (as a guideline, I need to set aside 25% of my fee income as expenses, and that's after I've set aside the VAT I have to charge and then pay over to HMRC) and then pay UK tax rates on what's left. (Which, as a staunch supporter of the NHS, I don't begrudge at all, but I have no choice about paying it.)
In short, that's no doubt an interesting look at the English Bar, but it's not a very representative one and is set to become less so.
posted by Major Clanger at 6:16 AM on May 31, 2017 [23 favorites]
Like many top barristers, Gott had effectively won the English educational system: He has a double-first-class degree (top marks in preliminary as well as final exams) from Cambridge. As he spoke about his work—Gott specializes in securing injunctions against striking workers—he cut open a packing case with a metal device that he identified as a fleam, an obsolete surgical implement used for bloodletting. Outside of work, Gott divides his time between two homes: one in a Martello tower—a kind of defensive fort built to fend off Napoleon—and another in a converted military landing craft moored on the Thames that he calls the “Houseboat Potemkin.” The Chambers and Partners legal directory describes Gott as “phenomenally intelligent,” but his eccentric professional demeanor is only possible because he has a hardheaded Alex Taylor to intercede between him and the world, wrangling with clients and handling payments. Taylor creates the space for Gott’s personality even as he’s employed by him.Specializing in strike-breaking and living in a boat named after a ship most famous for a labor-revolutionary uprising wasn't unsavory enough, I guess.
A more unsavory side of this coddling relationship is apparent elsewhere.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:13 AM on May 31, 2017 [3 favorites]
I watched Silk a few years ago and I wish I could've read this article beforehand because it was crazy/confusing. The system was just so completely... bonkers.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 9:33 AM on May 31, 2017
posted by TWinbrook8 at 9:33 AM on May 31, 2017
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