11KBW’s Sean Jones QC and direct access barrister Alistair Mitchell in #lawyerlovepoetry head-to-head

Jones

I love you: 1. More than roses and/or any flower: and 2. Almost as much as a billable hour; #lawyerlovepoetry

— Sean Jones (@seanjones11kbw) March 1, 2015

Mitchell

My love it runs as deep you see, As your Plea-Only advocacy. #lawyerlovepoetry

— carnybull (@carnybull) March 1, 2015

Jones

My love for you shall last, subject to paragraphs 13-25 below and provided you shall not predecease me, until my death #lawyerlovepoetry

— Sean Jones (@seanjones11kbw) March 1, 2015

Mitchell

My pleading falls upon deaf ears, TAKE YOUR GIMP MASK OFF MY DEAR #lawyerlovepoetry

— carnybull (@carnybull) March 1, 2015

Jones

Soft wind stirs my wig My heart leaps within my gown Bind me with pink tape @leisarea #lawyerlovepoetry

— Sean Jones (@seanjones11kbw) March 1, 2015

Mitchell

At luncheon in the Robing Room, Stripped off and embraced our doom. It was liberating. It was free. Now we face the BSB. #lawyerlovepoetry

— carnybull (@carnybull) March 1, 2015

On the basis of number of retweets, Jones is the clear winner. But then Mitchell has far fewer Twitter followers, and his raunchy gags are less shareable, so let’s call it a draw.

The post There was a poetry slam between two barristers on Twitter yesterday appeared first on Legal Cheek.

To roars of support on Twitter, St John’s Chambers barrister Lucy Reed slams family division chief’s court document rant

Sir James Munby reckons that lawyers who exceed the page limits for their bundles are “delinquents”, who, if they don’t buck up their ideas, should be shamed by a “special delinquents’ court”.

But family law barrister Lucy Reed thinks the president of the family division is blaming the wrong people. And she has said so on her popular Pink Tape blog to noisy acclaim on Twitter.

The row began on Thursday after Munby delivered a stinging attack on lawyers who fail to adhere to bundle rules. The top judge’s words came in the appeal of a judgment (embedded in full below) where a Slovenian father was awarded £23,000 in legal aid to have 591 pages of his daughter’s custody case translated from English to Slovene.

Slamming lawyers’ failure to comply with Bundles Practice Direction FPR 2010 PD 27A — which requires that “the bundle shall be contained in one A4 size ring binder or lever arch file limited to no more than 350 sheets of A4 paper and 350 sides of text” — Munby bellowed:

“The professions need to recognise that enough is enough. It is no use the court continuing feebly to issue empty threats. From now on delinquents can expect to find themselves subject to effective sanctions … If, despite this final wake-up call, matters do not improve I may be driven to consider setting up the special delinquents’ court suggested by Mostyn J.”

Those sanctions include the destruction without notice of documents which exceed the specified bundle size.

Many lawyers felt all this was a bit harsh, with the “delinquents” tag and accompanying “special delinquents’ court” brainwave — which as Munby acknowledges came via Lord Justice Mostyn — causing particular unease.

And over the weekend Reed took to her blog to articulate these thoughts, pointing out that “here in the stalls the bundle situation is not exactly peachy either”. She continues:

“The reality is that nobody has any power to control what goes into the bundle because the LA [local authority] control the index. There is no opportunity to liaise about indexes because the index arrives late if at all and is inevitably wrong because it has been completed by some administrative assistant who wouldn’t know PD27A if you slapped them in the face with it.”

Rounding off, Reed adds:

“Look, I don’t want to point the finger. But the sprinklers are going off and ‘it wos the LA, Miss!'”

Of course, as Reed goes on to explain, austerity-hit local authorities are currently hugely overstretched and so absolved of any real blame.

“That is to say, bundles are (understandably, dare I say it) not the top of the priority list for overstretched LAs,” she writes. “Getting final evidence of sufficient quality prepared and filed within increasingly tight timescales is understandably higher up the list than the pagination of said evidence (although in some LAs not, it appears, quite as high up the priority list as it ought to be).”

So, to conclude, the bundle situation is basically no one’s fault — other than the government’s. Time to direct your public ire at Chris Grayling and pals instead, Sir James?

BUNDLE RAGE: READ THE JUDGMENT IN FULL BELOW

L (A Child)

The post Bundle rage: Lawyer hits back after top judge labels page limit rule-breakers as ‘delinquents’ appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Fraud squad swooped on Chambers Solicitors in July and arrested two; meanwhile, New York-based former Tory MP reveals she’s had a Gorgeous George letter

The law firm at the centre of the George Galloway Twitter libel row was raided by police last summer, it has emerged.

Officers from the West Yorkshire Police’s economic crime unit swooped on the high street immigration law specialist practice, Chambers Solicitors, in July, making two arrests.

At the time of the raid, detective sergeant Gary Ferris of the West Yorkshire force’s economic crime unit said:

“Warrants were executed to a solicitors’ office in connection with investigations into alleged fraud. Two people have been arrested and are in custody. This is an ongoing investigation”.

The force today would only say that those two people had been released on police bail. Chambers Solicitors’ senior partner Mohammed Ayub told Legal Cheek this afternoon that he had no comment on the police investigation.

The revelation falls against the backdrop of an increasing row over the firm’s behaviour while acting for the local Respect Party MP.

Ayub alleged to Legal Cheek that one of the lawyers acting for defendants is conflicted in the current libel litigation, maintaining that top media lawyer Mark Lewis acted for the MP in the phone hacking saga involving the News of the World.

But Lewis, a partner at London firm Seddons, adamantly refuted the suggestion, saying:

“There is no merit to such an allegation”.

According to Lewis, in relation to the News Group Newspapers litigation, another London firm represented Galloway.

Lewis acknowledged that the controversial Respect Party MP “approached me at my old firm, Taylor Hampton, to represent him in a hacking claim against the Mirror. I forwarded that to Taylor Hampton who might or might not be acting (I do not know whether he has evidence to justify bringing a claim)”.

In addition to that scrap, the first celebrity name cropped up in the saga. Former Conservative MP Louise Mensch tweeted a few hours ago:

“I can confirm I have received a letter before action from Alias Yousaf of Chambers Solicitors, to which my lawyers have replied.”

She did not reveal which firm is acting for her.

I can confirm I have received a letter before action from Alias Yousaf of Chambers Solicitors, to which my lawyers have replied.

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) March 4, 2015

Earlier today, we reported how solicitors acting for Twitter users receiving letters before action alleging defamation from the high street firm have referred the practice to the Solicitors Regulation Authority over its behaviour in the matter.

Chambers Solicitors has claimed that costs of £5,000 in relation to each letter were justifiably incurred as it tracked down individual Twitter users. However, the main complaint against the firm is that it hit each prospective defendant with that cost figure, despite the letters appearing to be boilerplate claims.

Indeed, a report in the current issue of Private Eye maintained the letters were riddled with inaccuracies; for example, a version of the letter sent to a male charity worker began “Dear Miss …”

SRA executive director Robert Loughlin told Legal Cheek today:

“Now that we are aware of the matter, we will be looking to obtain all necessary information before deciding on the appropriate course of action.”

Senior partner Ayub responded by saying the firm would co-operate fully with any request for information from the regulator. However, he would not comment on any other element of the saga.

There have been better times for Ayub and his firm. Back in July 2009 he was The Times newspaper’s “lawyer of the week”.

The accolade came as he had acted for one of the three men subject to a control order in a landmark House of Lords ruling that controlled persons must be given sufficient disclosure of the case against them to meet the requirements of a fair trial under the Human Rights Act.

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George Galloway’s high street firm faces rough ride as media law big guns back twitterati in libel row [Legal Cheek]

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Star of legal drama Silk is back as you’ve never seen her before

Maxine Peake, the actress who plays Martha Costello in Silk, is to do the voiceover for a character reminiscent of the fictional top QC in a new animated film about legal aid superheroes.

‘Legal Aid Team’ — which will premiere on the Guardian website in April — features a host of cartoon lawyer-superhero hybrids, among whom is ‘Red Lawyer’ (pictured above), the Costello-like character.

Peake has won real-life lawyers’ respect by campaigning actively against the government’s cuts to the legal aid budget, appearing at the demonstration at Westminster last year (pictured below) and last month at the protests outside the Global Law Summit.

The actress — who is reported to be set to star in a US version of Silk later this year — joins comedians Kevin Eldon and Angela Barnes as the voices for the superheroes, with further big names set to be announced.

Fred Grace, the producer of the film, told Legal Cheek:

“We’re aiming to put the cuts to legal aid on the agenda before the general election as we think that they’ve largely been done under a cloak of boredom that has prevented people from outside the legal profession from taking an interest in something that will have serious repercussions for the justice system in this country.”

He went on to provide some background about Legal Aid Team:

“We’re delighted to have Maxine Peake on board to play one of the legal aid team. We wrote this script over a year ago with the premise that legal aid lawyers are heroes so why not make them into superheroes. As a long time supporter of Justice Alliance. She has come on in the last few weeks to add her weight to the campaign and play one of the superhero team fighting to save legal aid.”

As the company behind the production, Fat Rat Films, put the finishing touches to the video ahead of its 1 April launch, it is looking to secure funding to help with the costs of its project. Its funding page is here.

Follow @legalaidteam

The post Maxine Peake to play Martha Costello QC-style role in new animated short film appeared first on Legal Cheek.

If yet another review of legal education must be launched — let’s hope regulators have the guts to propose something radical and meaningful

David Hobart is not a typical media tart. The chief executive of the City of London Law Society is a former assistant chief of the defence staff in the Royal Air Force and ex-Bar Council chief executive.

None of those roles suggests a propensity for headline grabbing. Yet earlier this week, Hobart let loose with both barrels, telling the legal profession’s uber-regulator that the prospect of another round of navel gazing over the education and training of lawyers filled his Square Mile membership with a sense of utter horror.

“Please let this exhausted dog sleep for a few years,” was Hobart’s final plea to the Legal Services Board (LSB).

But the problem is that regulators of all shapes and sizes justify their existence by not just keeping dogs awake, but by prodding them repeatedly into running round the garden chasing their own tails.

In June 2013, the long anticipated and highly touted Legal Education and Training Review was published. It had been commissioned by the three leading frontline legal profession regulators — the Solicitor Regulation Authority, the Bar Standards Board and Legal Executives’ Professional Standards — and was ultimately greeted by the sound of one hand clapping.

At the time, The Lawyer magazine suggested:

“… if the authors of the 370-page report, which has been more than two and a half years in the gestating … were submitting it as a degree dissertation, their supervisors might … apply several … criticisms: long-winded, cluttered with verbosity and jargon, lacking focus and, in the words students would recognise, failing to cut to the chase.”

Now the regulator-in-chief wants to prod the dog again. Hobart’s “Apocalypse Now”-style comments came in response to strong hints from the LSB that it will launch yet another education and training review either this year or next.

Enough is enough, says the City man — and The Judge agrees.

The last thing the legal profession needs is another gaggle of academics — most of which haven’t practised law for years, if they have at all — racking up large consultancy fees to produce reams of jargon-filled pontificating that only the most profound insomniacs will plough through.

In fact, The Judge would go further. If there must be another review of the future of legal education and training, it should grasp the nettle and recommend dramatic reform. The bullet points should be few and simple, of the less-is-more variety, such as these:

Bin training contracts — or “periods of recognised training”, as they have ludicrously been rebranded.

The academic route to qualification to the solicitor branch of the profession should involve a law degree, a one-year short, sharp shock of practical training (retain the Legal Practice Course (LPC) label if that makes everyone feel comfortable) and bish-bosh, that’s it. A modified route should still exist for non-law graduates, involving a one-year conversion course.

Bin pupillages. The route to qualification at the bar should look a lot like the solicitors’ path: law degree plus a year’s practical advocacy training (add conversion course where necessary).

The last and most important stage for both routes — as well as those coming via non-academic legal executive or paralegal/apprenticeship paths — would be to pass a professional entrance exam.

Once qualified, these wannabe solicitors and barristers can go straight on the job market. The irritating mini-industry that has cropped up around law firm summer vacation schemes might continue, but it will be less important as it won’t be seen as such an crucial gateway to a training contact.

Law firms will be able to mould their young lawyers they way the want to from day one; and the indentured servitude that is exploitative pupillage at many chambers will vanish in a puff of acrid smoke. Plus the new streamlined system would save firms and chambers dosh.

Traditionalists will wail, but they will get over it. There are plenty of jurisdictions around the world — indeed, most — where lawyers qualify as soon as they have successfully completed academic study and leapt over a final bar exam hurdle.

And if those conducting the review really had any yarbles, they would go a step further: merge the initial academic study for all lawyers, with the route being: degree (conversion course if necessary), plus a merged LPC that included some advocacy training.

After initial qualification, those aiming to appear before the higher courts would be required to do a period of further intensive advocacy training of six months to a year.

And that’s it. No gut-wrenching summer vac, training contract, mini-pupillage and pupilliage applications and interviews — just a straightforward job hunt, like what everyone else experiences.

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BBC children’s telly sketch team pump up the volume over ancient rights

To get down with the kids — and by that, we mean the real kids, namely, children — you have to rap.

And while lawyers are probably fed up to the eyeteeth with Magna Carta-related reports — not least after having been subjected to reams of propaganda from the government’s own celebration of the 800th anniversary, the Global Law Summit — the BBC is now trying to interest children in the origins of English civil liberties.

CBBC stalwart, Horrible Histories, has just produced a rap song and video encapsulating the clash and then deal cut between a group of self-interested early 13th century barons and King John, whom many adult historians regard as petty at the best of times and cruelly psychopathic at the worst.

“We’re ticked off, big time,” the barons inform a slightly effete King John in the CBBC version. A bishop then pronounces that the only way the dispute can be settled is through a “grievance battle” and up pumps the beat.

The barons tell the King that they can’t pay their tax, because, “we lost all our money when you lost France — the Norman bit, anyway”.

The monarch then comes over all homeboy, rapping:

“I thought I was King,” before grasping his own crotch and saying “I’m holding his seal”.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO BELOW

The post Magna Carta: the rap battle appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Doughty Street human rights barrister bags prestigious New York gig

Amal Clooney is heading back to New York, the city where she worked for two years at the beginning of her career as a corporate lawyer with Sullivan & Cromwell.

The Doughty Street human rights barrister will take up a position as a visiting senior fellow with Columbia University Law School’s Human Rights Institute, which will see her give visiting lecturers over the spring to students at the Ivy League outfit.

The part-time nature of the role will enable Clooney to continue her bread and butter public law work in London, where she and her actor husband, George Clooney, are based.

In a statement on Columbia University Law School’s website, the illustrious institution said it was “thrilled” to have secured Clooney’s services. Head of the university’s Human Rights Institute Professor Sarah Cleveland commented:

“We are privileged to have an international human rights practitioner of Amal Clooney’s stature join our faculty. Her extensive experience advocating before U.N. and regional human rights mechanisms complements our existing offerings and will enrich the experience of our students.”

Amal was similarly chuffed to have secured the gig, saying:

“It is an honour to be invited as a visiting professor at Columbia Law School alongside such a distinguished faculty and talented student pool. I look forward to getting to know the next generation of human rights advocates studying here.”

The position dovetails nicely with hubby George’s schedule, with the silver fox set to film his latest movie, ‘Money Monster’, in New York this spring. It also could get Amal off the hook over the mini-pupillage which Kim Kardashian is reportedly badgering her to arrange back in London.

The post Amal Clooney joins Columbia University as visiting lecturer appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Legal Cheek Careers event at Gray’s Inn featuring a panel of top solicitors and barristers — open to all law students and junior lawyers, with free tickets available below

Want to be an advocate but not sure how to get there? Can’t decide whether the barrister or solicitor route is the best way to go? Or already embarked on the BPTC or LPC and want to know how to plan your career?

At a time of contrasting fortunes for the legal profession — with publicly-funded firms and chambers struggling while their commercial cousins recover their pre-recession mojo — a panel of five top litigators from the bar and the City will be explaining how they made it to the top via their respective routes and reflect on how they would play it if they were students today.

The star-studded event — which takes place at Gray’s Inn on the evening of 24 March — will also consider the effects of new entrant alternative business structures on the advocacy scene, with the panellists delivering their predictions about the future and answering questions from the audience.

The speakers

The Question Time-style discussion — which will be chaired by Legal Cheek managing editor Alex Aldridge — starts at 6pm, and is followed by drinks and nibbles until 8pm, kindly provided by Gray’s Inn.

You do not have to be a member of an Inn to attend: all law students and junior lawyers are welcome. Reserve a ticket here.

In order to keep our events free, please note that anyone who reserves a ticket and does not attend will be ineligible for future Legal Cheek Careers events unless they provide us with notification 48 hours in advance of the event.

The post Event: Where will the next generation of advocates come from and how will they train? appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Rod-related recollections

In these chambers photos the barristers each seems to be telling a tale of an increasingly unlikely-sized fish that got away.

Or maybe we’re reading too much into 9 Gough Square’s barristers’ hand gestures?

Thanks to an old friend of Legal Cheek for drawing our attention to the fishy photos.

The post 9 Gough Square barristers recall the increasingly unlikely-sized fish that got away appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Wannabe lawyer’s antics could be a turn-off for law firms and chambers

A law student has rushed the main stage of world-famous dog show Crufts to raise awareness of animal welfare — but has he jeopardised a future career in law in the process?

Luke Steele, 25, who is currently studying law at the Open University, stormed onto the main floor at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) in Birmingham at the weekend as winners were being announced.

Steele, who was holding a placard that read “Mutts Against Crufts”, rushed towards the podium as dog handler Rebecca Cross was about to accept her award along with her Scottish Terrier named Knopa.

The wannabe lawyer was protesting the belief that many of the dogs in attendance have health problems due to unnatural characteristics developed through breeding techniques.

Shortly after unveiling his sign, Steele — who describes himself on Twitter as an “aspiring environmental and animal protection legal advocate” — was quickly tackled and carried away by six security staff.

Footage of the incident has since appeared on the People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals’ (PETA) website and YouTube channel — which describes the law student as a “gutsy activist”.

Steele, from Leeds, works closely with a number of animal welfare groups including “Ban Blood Sports on Ilkley Moore” (BBIM), which campaigns to ban grouse shooting in West Yorkshire.

Despite being released without charge, it’s not clear yet how Steele’s actions will be viewed by potential employers.

The video — which has already received more than 50,000 views in one day — is likely to put off many recruiters at the top firms. Others, might perhaps be more forgiving and see a young man showing passion for his intended area of future practice.

Either way it’s certainly going to be a talking point if he’s lucky enough to make it to interviews.

WATCH THE INCIDENT IN FULL BELOW:

The post Law student brings disruption to Crufts — but at what cost? appeared first on Legal Cheek.

A pile of 2013 crime law bibles finally comes in handy as two wannabe barristers make sensible use of their time in run-up to a key qualification staging post

Those crazy kids at the Holborn branch of BPP Law School in London have fashioned a Lego-style fort from two-year-old copies of the criminal law advocate’s bible.

Harking back to their “Swallows and Amazon” days of childhood, two wannabe barristers eased the tension of cramming for an ethics exam by crafting the type of structure in which a six-year-old could spend days hiding from parents and teachers.

For bricks and mortar they have employed a large pile of 2013 copies of “Archbold Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice” … of course. They have also taken care to design what appears to be an arrow loop, clearly in anticipation of attack by fellow students or lecturers.

The anonymous Bar Professional Training Course students maintained that neither is that keen on construction law, although they credited youthful addictions to the Danish toy phenomenon for providing a solid grounding in working with building blocks.

Sadly, killjoy officials at BPP have since dismantled the fort, which had been situated in pride of place in the student common room.

Its architects suspect the demolition mob did their dirty work overnight because, as one told Legal Cheek:

“I left at five o’clock in the evening and came straight in at nine the following morning. And it was gone”.

BPP’s brutal planning decision, said one of the fort’s designers, “has greatly saddened the student cohort”.

There was no word on whether the fort’s dramatic demise had an impact on ethics exam results.

The post Under siege bar students build fort out of Archbolds appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Blow-by-blow report of the renowned dust-up between a flamboyant Harry Potter-style solicitor-advocate and a belligerent member of the bench reveals both sides were a bit shakey on their facts

The full transcript (embedded below) has been released of the now infamous hearing in which a Crown Court judge carpeted Lord Harley of Counsel for appearing before him in a get-up reminiscent of a Harry Potter character — and neither party comes out looking that clever.

The 28 August 2014 hearing at Cardiff Crown Court created a media storm around the flamboyant solicitor-advocate and his LinkedIn CV, which lists a stream of honours and other qualifications.

So gob-smacked have been some lawyers that Lord Harley — also known as Alan Blacker — has been referred to professional regulators, with allegations suggesting he has over-egged his credentials.

But Blacker has defended his position vociferously — and the court transcript reveals that Judge Wynn Morgan is himself not exactly up to speed with the structure and regulation of the modern legal profession.

Lord Harley devotees will recall that the fun kicked off that day at the end of a hearing involving a charge of death by dangerous driving. A string of ribbons and badges on Lord Harley’s gown attracted the judge’s attention.

On establishing that Blacker was not a barrister but a solicitor-advocate, Judge Morgan states:

“My understanding is that solicitor-advocates are regulated by The Law Society.”

Lord Harley (as Blacker is referred to in the court transcript) immediately, and accurately, puts the judge right. “That is not correct, your honour,” he says confidently, which only further enrages the man on the bench.

“I want this clear,” barks back Judge Morgan. “You are asserting that solicitor advocates are not regulated by the Law Society?”

“That is quite correct, sir,” confirms Blacker. “Solicitors have not been regulated by the Law Society for the last 12 years. They have, instead, been represented and regulated by the Solicitor Regulation Authority.”

Of course, Blacker lets himself down on that point, as the reality is that the Legal Services Act 2007 created the SRA, and while it regulates solicitors, the Law Society represents the profession.

Call it a score draw so far.

Then the judge got into a spot of difficulty over the title of “senior counsel”, which Blacker ascribes to himself. “In my experience,” pontificates the judge, pointing out that he has been in practice since 1978, “the only area where I have ever heard anybody described as ‘senior counsel’ is the rank of leading counsel in South Africa.”

Fair enough — SC is unquestionably a title in the South African legal profession. But it is also widely used across several other prominent common law jurisdictions, such as Australia, Ireland, Hong Kong and Singapore. Indeed, the Kiwis switched from Queen’s Counsel to SC several years ago, but then, in a rush of fondness for the old country, the New Zealand bar authorities switched back.

But it is the ribbons and badges that really got on Judge Morgan’s wick.

“If you ever appear before this court again dressed as you are at the moment,” barked the judge, “I shall exercise my right to decline to hear you. … if you want to come into court looking like something out of Harry Potter, you can forget coming into this court ever again. Do I make myself clear?”

According to the transcript, Blacker appeared to be keen to carry on the tussle, responding with a “Your Honour…” But by that stage Judge Morgan had had a bellyful.

“I am going to rise,” he states. And he did.

Those hoping the SRA would get its head quickly round the issue of Blacker’s behaviour and claimed qualifications remain frustrated. Despite the authority cogitating over the issue since the end of last summer, it doesn’t seem to have made much progress.

In a statement yesterday to Legal Cheek, an SRA spokesman said simply:

“The case is still open, our investigation has yet to conclude.”

As for south Wales’s most notorious advocate himself — Blacker too had short shrift for this publication:

“Dear Sirs and Mesdames,” he wrote to Legal Cheek. “His Lordship makes no comments to the gutter press.”

Lord Harley Vs Crown Court judge — the transcript in full

PREVIOUSLY:

Solicitors Regulation Authority finally issues statement about ‘Lord Harley of Counsel’ LinkedIn CV [Legal Cheek]

9 reasons why ‘Lord Harley of Counsel’ has the best LinkedIn CV of any lawyer ever [Legal Cheek]

Solicitor-advocate who judge slammed for dressing ‘like something out of Harry Potter’ expresses shock at ‘unwarranted attack’ [Legal Cheek]

The post Lord Harley of Counsel Vs Welsh Crown Court judge — full transcript emerges appeared first on Legal Cheek.

They are professionally meaningless, expensive and at times messy — but should the awards ceremonies be pensioned off?

When it comes to legal profession award ceremonies, Woody Allen’s remark in his classic 1977 film, Annie Hall, unavoidably leaps to mind.

“Awards!” he wails, as ex-girlfriend Annie screeches off in a sports car to catch her latest squeeze at the Grammys. “They do nothing but give out awards! I can’t believe it. Greatest fascist dictator — Adolf Hitler!”

One can only speculate at what the great bespectacled director would make of the legal profession and its addiction to handing out gongs to its own members.

This morning The Lawyer magazine — arguably the outfit initially responsible for the current glut of awards — trumpeted the results of its “European Awards”, having spent the last week appealing for more nominations for its headline “Lawyer Awards” gig. In addition to its blue riband event, the title also hosts a management awards.

Meanwhile, two days ago, the Legal Aid Practitioners Group and the Bar Council announced that nominations for the LALYs had opened. For the uninitiated, the LALYs are the “Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards”. The name is slightly misleading, as not just one lucky lawyer will pick up a trinket — there are no fewer than a dozen categories, almost suggesting that there’s life in the legal aid sector after all.

The LALYs are only the most recent legal profession award ceremony to tout for nominations. These days, there are almost more award ceremonies for lawyers than there are napkin rings in the Slaughter and May partners’ dining room.

The Lawyer‘s rival Legal Week is by no means outdone, stumping up with three back slapping events: the “British Legal Awards”, the “Legal Innovation Awards”, and the “African Legal Awards”.

Also piling in with at least one ceremony each are Legal Business magazine, the Chambers & Partners directory, the International Financial Law Review, LexisNexis Butterworths with its “Halsbury Legal Awards”, and the “Modern Law Awards” — organised by software manufactures Eclipse.

Even the Law Society of England and Wales has lumbered onto the bandwagon with its “Excellence Awards”, the highlight of which last year was the organisers giving their own chief executive a lifetime achievement gong.

Indeed, that prize for Des Hudson suggests that legal profession award ceremonies are finally on the brink of coming full circle and eating themselves.

Does anyone take the awards seriously? Should lawyers revolt and say enough is enough — we don’t need your garish glass trophies — and what’s more, we want to stop being ripped off for dinner?

Yes … and no.

The structure of more or less all these ceremonies — and the earlier list is by no means exhaustive — is formulaic (with the possible exception of the LALYs).

The organisers construct as many categories as they can imagine that will tease the egos of as many wealthy global law firms as possible.

Having lured say 10 nominations for each category, they plonk all on a short list and hit them with invitations to a gala ceremony — that’s a table of 10 for up to £5,600 (if you don’t want to be near the lavatories — oh, and the fee is exclusive of VAT). Yes, that’s £560 per head for rubber chicken and as many bread rolls as you can throw at the senior partner.

The evening itself will normally be headlined by something approaching a B-list comedian (or in the case of the ever-so-serious Law Society, a BBC newsreader). That poor sod will fight a losing battle to be heard beyond the introduction, dole out the awards as sharpish as humanly possible, grin through gritted teeth for photographs with the winners, and dash for the door as soon as the lights go up, stopping only to collect a large cheque.

The real point of the awards has nothing to do with which City firm wins the category of “Best project finance deal completed while team was standing on heads in a country with a dodgy human rights record”. Even five minutes after the trophy has been passed to a slightly sozzled head of department no-one will remember.

What the awards do is provide an opportunity for law firms and in-house legal departments to let a few chosen souls — often including non-qualified staff — off the lead for an evening. They get howlingly pissed, dance like lunatics, try to snog someone they shouldn’t — and its all on the firm’s shilling.

Legal awards are clearly professionally meaningless, no matter how many City law firms fill glass cabinets with ever-more tasteless trophies — not least because just about every City law firm has got a cabinet full of the damn things.

But if a couple of big nights out each year buck up the spirits of those who otherwise toil for long hours in fairly uninspired and soul destroying occupations — then the awards ceremonies are providing a something of a social service.

And the firm’s are by no means unsophisticated or naïve participants; if they want to spend the best part of 600 knicker per person for an inferior dinner out — and in doing so, prop up the finances of legal publishers — then why shouldn’t they?

Follow @JudgeJohnHack

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The Judge Rules: Training contracts and pupillages should be scrapped [Legal Cheek]

The Judge rules: The magic circle is dead! Er … no it’s not [Legal Cheek]

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City University law student and local council candidate triggers defence of Chris Grayling in MP’s constituency newspaper

An anonymous newspaper letter in support of legal profession bête noire Chris Grayling has praised the justice secretary for cracking down on legal aid lawyers who “spiel out rhetoric and stretch a case as long as possible”.

The tirade came in the form of a letter to the editor at the Epsom Guardian in Surrey, the local paper in Grayling’s parliamentary constituency.

It was a riposte to an earlier published letter from wannabe barrister and local council candidate Alex Cisneros. The part-time Bar Professional Training Course student at London’s City University is bidding for seat on the Epsom and Ewell Borough Council, which will be contested on general election polling day, 7 May.

Last month, Cisneros wrote to the newspaper following criticism of Grayling in the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.

“Mr Grayling is the first non-lawyer in 440 years to be in charge of our courts and legal system,” he wrote. “Since getting the job as Justice Minister [sic], he has cut legal aid to the bone, caused barristers across the country to strike for the first time ever and required dozens of essential law centres to close. To find out now that these cuts were pushed through without proper scrutiny, or even any evidence in some circumstances, is disgusting.”

But at least one local constituent is perfectly happy with Grayling’s performance. However, the fact that the letter is signed off with “name and address supplied” has led to a round of speculation that the correspondent must be one of the MP’s mates from the Dog and Duck in Epsom high street.

Indeed, the correspondent’s syntax suggests that the letter was penned after a rather long session in the public house.

“Mr Cisneros states that Mr Grayling is the first non-lawyer to be in charge of our courts,” writes anonymous. “At least he would not have been involved in the old boy network and would be able to see the whole law situation without being tainted by the system which has been in place forever.

“We are fortunate to have an honest and hardworking MP who has done so much for his constituents.”

PREVIOUSLY:

BPTC student stands for local council in Grayling’s constituency [Legal Cheek]

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Exclusive: London set leapfrogs rivals as it charges near to top of national league table in remuneration for baby barristers

A fresh round of pupillage award inflation could hit London chambers after a leading set boosted the cash it hands out to wannabe barristers by 40%.

Legal Cheek has learnt that commercial set Outer Temple Chambers has increased its pupillage award from £43,000 to £60,000.

The move brings the chambers into the third tier in the pupillage award stakes. According to the Legal Cheek Chambers Most List, Outer Temple joins 13 other sets offering pupils £60,000 to join.

The top tier features just one set — 2 Temple Gardens, which at the beginning of the year ratcheted up its pupillage cash to £67,500.

Chasing in the second tier are six chambers — Fountain Court, 4 Pump Court, Quadrant, Wilberforce, XXIV Old Buildings and 11 Stone Buildings — offering £65,000.

Outer Temple’s rush of generosity sees the chambers leap frog seven sets on the list that offer between £45,000 and £55,000 awards.

The Outer Temple move will put pressure on those sets to keep up with the competition, as well as casting a spotlight on 7 Bedford Row, which is looking increasingly mean for a London chambers with a considerable commercial practice, as it offers awards worth only £40,000.

James Counsell, Outer Temple’s head of pupillage, told Legal Cheek that the dramatic increase was spurred by the “competitive market place”, commenting:

“Historically, we have been fortunate enough to attract and retain pupils of the highest calibre. That said, we wish to make sure that we continue to attract the most talented candidates to be our colleagues in the future … We reviewed the level of the award and decided an increase was appropriate, particularly given the ever increasing amount of commercial and financial services work we undertake and the continuing success of our common law practice groups.”

Outer Temple — which is home to 17 silks, 62 juniors and offers three annual pupillages — stipulates that at most 25% of the £60,000 award can be drawn down for Bar Professional Training Course fees.

Applications for pupillage at most chambers, including Outer, can be made from next month when the centralised Pupillage Gateway opens for business on 1 April.

Want to know more about the top chambers, including what they pay and how Oxbridge-dominated they are? The Legal Cheek top 30 chambers Most List has all the answers.

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Five years’ call junior to run for parliament representing newly “refounded” political party that was dissolved in 1868

When glanced at in a hurry, Alasdair Henderson’s website appears to suggest that he is throwing a party to celebrate his profession’s collective love of wigs.

This is incorrect, of course, with the 1 Crown Office Row barrister’s focus trained not on wigs but Whigs — the historic political movement which he and a bunch of other young wannabe politicians are in the process of resurrecting.

Dissolved in 1868 amid the rise of Labour, the Whig party was “refounded” last year by former army officer Waleed Ghan. Since then it has sparked appeal among a host of idealistic young professionals with a yearning for the glorious past, and secured five candidates to run for parliament in May’s general election.

Among them is Henderson, a five years’ call junior specialising in public law, employment and equality, human rights and clinical negligence, who is standing for the Whigs in London’s Bethnal Green and Bow constituency.

On his website, the young Oxford-educated rookie admits feeling “increasingly disillusioned” with the current political scene, before explaining why the Whig party — whose philosophy seems not dissimilar to the pre-Coalition Liberal Democrats — offers a credible alternative.

The barrister, 29, goes on to issue an appeal that sounds tailored to Bethnal Green’s thriving hipster community, describing the Whig philosophy as “vintage political principles that have stood the test of time, reworked for the 21st Century”.

Will such rhetoric get Henderson his deposit back elected?

“Let’s be realistic,” he told Legal Cheek yesterday afternoon, “I’d just love to get one person out to vote who otherwise would not have bothered because they felt disillusioned.”

Henderson added that his focus was on achieving the 2,500 votes necessary to secure the refund of the £500 deposit which he handed over in order to become a candidate.

As for what his colleagues in chambers — who include UK Human Rights Blog editor Adam Wagner and Boris Johnson’s wife Marina Wheeler — make of Henderson’s bid for power, the barrister said they were “slightly bemused that I’m running for a party they thought disappeared 150 years ago, but are now quite excited.”

Whig Party — Alasdair Henderson — Bethnal Green and Bow [Whigs.UK]

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Newspaper watchdog rules that two Fleet Street tabloids and a regional publication did not breach its code of practice in reporting the elaborate claims of one of the country’s most renowned advocates

It may be only six months old and its genius highly controversial, but the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) has already attracted the attention of Lord Harley of Counsel.

Legal Cheek can reveal that the Rochdale-based solicitor-advocate — who has attained notoriety for an idiosyncratic approach to court dress and a resultant dust-up with a Crown Court judge last August — made three separate complaints regarding coverage of claims made on his elaborate LinkedIn profile. Lord Harley — aka Alan Blacker — took issue with articles in the Mail Online, Daily Mirror and Wales Online.

The complaints were made to IPSO — which is chaired by retired Court of Appeal judge Sir Alan Moses — between late October and early November last year, with the findings made public in late February.

In relation to the Mail Online and Daily Mirror, Blacker said the articles had inappropriately questioned his “bona fides”, particularly his membership of the Order of St John, of ambulance and Jerusalem eye hospital fame. He also alleged that the Mail Online was wrong when it reported he claimed to speak several languages fluently — and furthermore the use of his image was a breach of his intellectual property.

The Mail Online and Daily Mirror satisfied IPSO that they had reported the matter fairly and accurately, both submitting a statement from the Order of St John in Wales stating that Blacker was in no way associated with the organisation. The Mail Online also provided IPSO with screenshots of Blacker’s LinkedIn CV, on which he continues to claim to have “native or bilingual proficiency” in Urdu, Gujarati, Luo, Punjabi and Hindi.

In relation to Wales Online’s coverage, Blacker took issue with a reference to a Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) statement, which he claimed was never actually issued. The paper ran comments from the regulator saying that it was aware of concerns raised around Blacker’s purported credentials and that officials were investigating.

Blacker was also unhappy with a reference in the paper to him as a “Walter Mitty character”, maintaining it was unfair that the Wales Online had failed to disclose the source of the comment.

IPSO — which is the successor to the widely discredited Press Complaints Commission and was controversially launched in the wake of Sir Brian Leveson’s year-long inquiry into press ethics — was satisfied that Wales Online acted within the regulations.

In arriving at that decision, IPSO reviewed contemporaneous notes of the website’s conversation with the SRA, and considered assurances that the Walter Mitty comment was made by a source familiar with Blacker personally and that the remark was the unnamed source’s personal opinion.

In dismissing Blacker’s three complaints, the IPSO committee did not identify any significant inaccuracies that would require correction under the terms of its code.

PREVIOUSLY:

Lord Harley of Counsel Vs Welsh Crown Court judge — full transcript emerges [Legal Cheek]

9 reasons why ‘Lord Harley of Counsel’ has the best LinkedIn CV of any lawyer ever [Legal Cheek]

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Modern cyber marketing is flashier, but it lacks the individualistic charm of the earlier generation

Life was so much simpler in 1996.

The Spice Girls and Oasis were in the charts. As were those cheeky chappies Baddiel & Skinner and The Lightning Seeds with “Three Lions” — for that was the year football came home as England hosted the European Championship and Germany won the competition.

Even though the worldwide web had been around for some time, 1996 was the year that law firms twigged to the fact that they had better jump aboard the cyber bandwagon.

Surely the hordes of marketing and business development staff (remind me again of the difference) that have since grown like Japanese knot weed at law firms will have in the intervening nearly two decades made massive improvements to their employers’ sites.

No, not really.

Of course, modern law firm websites are infinitely flashier and slicker than their predecessors, incorporating all the tropes of modernity such as animated GIFs, embedded videos, hi-resolution imagery, mood-enhancing fading page transition gimmickry — and the odd tea-making facility.

But while modern sites at the top end of the City and US law firm markets incorporate enough bells and whistles to give an anti-capitalist march a run for its money, they are all much of a muchness. For the most part, they look and feel the same — and importantly, they more or less spout the same anodyne drivel.

“As one of the world’s leading law firms, we advise many of the biggest and most ambitious organisations across all major regions of the globe,” states Anglo-Australian firm Herbert Smith Freehills.

Likewise, Shearman & Sterling “has been advising many of the world’s leading corporations and financial institutions, governments and governmental organisations for more than 140 years”, say the New Yorkers in a stunning bid to set the firm apart in a crowded market.

Indeed, some firms try so hard to distinguish themselves that they fall into embarrassing traps. For example, that global giant we all take for granted today, Clifford Chance, was just nine years old in 1996, the product of a 1987 merger between Clifford Turner and Coward Chance.

Its 1996 home page has all the hallmarks of an earlier Blue Peter-style era of web design, and is dominated with a charming “Welcome” message.

Perhaps today’s marketing wallhas at CC should have stuck with the homespun simple approach of an earlier generation. Doing so might have saved them the grief of their current home page embarrassment as revealed in our earlier coverage today.

Interestingly, the supposed media-savvy crowd at London firm Olswang seemed to get it wrong then — and now. In 1999 the firm adopted a web design that has something of a naff Teletext feel about it. Today, it has one of the most dull and static home pages in law firm cyberspace.

Indeed, of the 10 sites highlighted by Legal Cheek, the only modern incarnation that catches the Judge’s eye is that of global maritime and aviation specialists Clyde & Co. Massive great hi-res images that fill the screen and are at least vaguely interesting on an artistic photographic level.

As for the text, most of it is clear-cut and simple — three main categories on the home page that are relatively useful. And while the firm also trots out the standard meaningless banalities — “Clyde & Co is a dynamic, rapidly expanding global law firm focused on providing a complete legal service to clients in our core sectors” — it keeps that level of nonsense to a relative minimum.

But to be fair, the modern Clyde & Co effort isn’t a patch on its 1998 version. In those days, it had a chic John Player Special look that almost meant that if the law firm had produced fags, the Judge would have been puffing their brand.

Previously

Revealed: How big law firms’ websites looked in the 90s [Legal Cheek]

The Judge rules: Legal profession awards — don’t they make you sick?!!! [Legal Cheek]

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Irish high court stops short of striking off Dublin solicitor because he was depressed — and paid the cash back

Lawyers — pay attention. If you receive a letter from Nigeria offering you all the riches in the world in exchange for a simple favour, put the note immediately in the shredder.

That might seem like a statement of the bleeding obvious, but members of the legal profession continue to be hoodwinked by the most clumsy and obvious of frauds – with a sad story emerging this week from Dublin to highlight the issue.

James Maher, who ran a small practice in the republic’s capital, fell into the standard “Nigerian letter” trap and found himself nearly a quarter of a million euros lighter as a result.

According to a report earlier this week in the Irish Times, the 53-year-old solicitor fell for a scam despite all the usual warning signs flashing in a multitude of colours. He bought a story involving a massive sum of €26 million, references to US President Barack Obama, the National petroleum Company of Nigeria — and a sob story around a cancer stricken wife of a former client.

In the end, Maher paid over €242,219 from his client account between April and September 2011.

Irish Law Society officials told a high court judge hearing the case that “naive” Maher had fallen for a “classic scam”. And that the lawyer’s gullibility had been unfortunately exacerbated by difficulties in his marriage and a long-standing bi-polar disorder.

Ultimately, the solicitor avoided being struck off as he was able to reimburse the lost cash after he inherited funds from a recently deceased uncle. But presumably he’ll have to toil away on residential conveyancing files until he’s 103 before reimbursing himself.

Maher’s plight is nothing new. Nearly two decades ago, the Law Gazette on this side of the Irish Sea warned English and Welsh solicitors that “so-called Nigerian letters are the best known examples of attempts at … fraud …’ It went on to say that “a number of solicitors have failed to see through the scams and have been sucked in”.

A decade later — in 2006 — the situation had improved little, with the newspaper publishing a long article bemoaning the continuing propensity of bumbling green-eyed solicitors to charge headlong into the fraudsters’ traps.

That article finished with an old standby that smaller high street law firms should probably frame on their walls:

“If something looks too good to be true, then it probably is.”

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Eclipse? What eclipse? That was the disappointed chorus from the heart of the legal profession planet; but Faroese lawyers were laughing

Britons across the country morphed into amateur astronomers this morning and went a bit bonkers over a once-in-a-generation chance to catch sight of a near-as-dammit full solar eclipse.

All Britons, that is, apart from legal London, where the sentiment was bemused sarcasm all round.

This photograph — posted on the Inner Temple Library’s Facebook page — illustrates that the Inns of Court looked pretty much like they always do on a late March morning: cloudy grey (although some of the flasher QC motors seem to have been cropped out of the image).

Well, the PR and communications team at the Holborn HQ of transatlantic giant Hogan Lovells gave it a pop. They tweeted this dramatic shot of themselves as gazing into the overcast sky from their 12th floor balcony.

What eclipse?? Not much for the HL PR team to see from the 12th floor balcony at Atlantic House this morning! pic.twitter.com/PPedssPud3

— Press Office (@HoganLovellsUK) March 20, 2015

While the celestial gods failed to smile on legal London, lawyers in the Faroe Islands capital of Tórshavn had a much more meaningful experience of the eclipse.

A spokeswoman for leading local firm Advokatfelagið við Strond — a nine-lawyer operation practising just about every area of law imaginable — confirmed to Legal Cheek that at 9.41 this morning “spectacular views of the eclipse” were visible from the steps in front of the firm’s offices.

“Many of our lawyers took the opportunity to go outside and photograph the event,” said the spokeswoman, who confirmed that the eclipse was jolly well impressive, indeed.

So put that in your telescopes and … er … smoke it, HogLovs.

Next time, that comms team should organise flights for partners and staff to the former Danish colony. Note for diaries: next time is scheduled for August 2026.

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