.jpg)
Victoria Wakefield
I have been asked to set down a "week in the life" from my year as a pupil. The following is a real week from relatively early on in my pupillage, when Jemima Stratford was my pupil supervisor.
(I sat with Jemima until Christmas and, in reflection of her practice areas, I spent most of my time on cases which concerned public law or european law. I subsequently moved to Helen Davies QC and then Tim Lord QC, with whom I did largely commercial work. My fourth and final seat was spent on competition work with Mark Hoskins.)
Monday
My first advocacy exercise is on Thursday and skeleton arguments must be in on Wednesday. However, I'm away in Strasbourg tomorrow and Wednesday, so need to finish my skeleton today.
All the pupils were given the same papers for the advocacy exercise a couple of weeks ago. The papers are from an old case in which one of the members of chambers was instructed and don't seem to be particularly complicated. That said, working with a bundle of 100 or so pages is very different to working with a one page moot problem. I've already read over the documents a couple of times and finished (I hope) all the research into the law, so just need to draft the skeleton today. Fortunately, Jemima does not need me to work on anything else, so I can devote all my time to it.
Tuesday
I caught an early eurostar this morning with Jemima and two other members of chambers: Richard Gordon QC and Fionn Pilbrow. All three have been working on a human rights case, the hearing of which will take place tomorrow at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
I haven't had a huge amount of time to read into the case, so I spend most of the journey reading into the documents (which range from the skeleton argument for the hearing to the factual documents which were used in the original domestic case). The case concerns a British former soldier who was exposed to mustard gas and nerve gas testing at Porton Down in the 1960s. He claims, amongst other things, that he was denied adequate access to information concerning the tests he underwent, in violation of Articles 8 and 10 of the Convention.
Everyone else spends the journey working hard, discussing difficult points and making amendments to the skeleton. We finally arrive in Strasbourg in the early evening and work continues at the hotel until late at night, interrupted only by a (very nice) meal out. I feel lucky to be dispensable and able to go to bed at a reasonable hour.
Wednesday
Having got up early to make sure we arrive at the Court in good time, disaster strikes. Our taxi driver manages to put all our papers in his boot and then lock the keys inside it. Initially, it seems catastrophic (and the taxi driver looks suitably distressed), but further copies of the skeleton are printed out and Richard is confident that he can go ahead without any other papers. We take another taxi to Court, with our original taxi driver having promised that he will get the papers out of his car as soon as he can.
Having arrived at Court, we spend some time with instructing solicitors (from Liberty) and the client, Mr Roche. When we finally go into the hearing, there is a sizeable audience (consisting, it appears, largely of soldiers). There is a real atmosphere and, despite the fact that I don't have to do anything, I begin to feel quite nervous.
The Court is sitting in its 17-member Grand Chamber and when all the judges enter the court room they make an impressive sight. Richard and counsel for the Government make their submissions and then several questions are put to them both. Insofar as I can tell, the hearing goes well for us (In fact, when judgment was handed down a year later, we had won on Article 8 (see Roche v UK [2005] 20 BHRC 99).
After lunch in a restaurant in Strasbourg town centre, we take the train to Paris and then a late eurostar back to London. Having dropped off our papers (retrieved from the taxi driver at the eleventh hour) in Chambers, I head home.
Thursday
It's the advocacy exercise today and I feel a bit anxious about it. Since we didn't get back until late last night, Jemima has given me the morning off. When I come into Chambers in the afternoon I read over the papers again and think through my skeleton argument.
In fact, I'm relatively pleased with how the exercise goes. The panel (which is made up of the same people as the tenancy committee) don't ask too many tricky questions and, although I make a few mistakes, I can see what I should do to avoid making them next time. In particular, I am surprised at how hard it is to work with so much evidence. It really is necessary to come to a viewpoint which reconciles all the documents (or at least to come up with a reason why any conflicting evidence doesn't matter).
After the exercise the other pupils and I go to the pub and, after a few pints and packets of crisps, I head home.
Friday
I will be in the Brussels annex all next week, working on a case with Fergus Randolph (a member of Chambers who was, at the time I did pupillage, based in the Brussels annexe and is now based in London). The case (R (Quark Fishing Limited) v The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs) is on its way to the House of Lords and Fergus has asked me to spend today looking at one particular aspect of that process: security for costs.
Fergus has asked me to prepare a note on the requirement that an appellant to the House of Lords lodge £25,000 within one week of presenting the appeal, irrespective of the likelihood of the appellant failing to meet the respondent's costs if unsuccessful. Given that this is out of step with all lower jurisdictions and that it causes loss to the appellant (not least since no interest is returned on that amount), we want to challenge the requirement.
I spend the day researching the position in Human Rights law (both on security for costs in general and also on the retention of the interest accrued on the sum by the State) and in EC law (on national procedural bars to the making of Article 234 references). I'll draft the note for Fergus once I've arrived in Brussels next week. (In fact, this particular matter went to an extraordinary hearing in front of a panel of three law lords (Lords Hoffmann and Rodger and Baroness Hale), about which I wrote a case note ([2005] JR 135). We lost.)
Having packed up everything I'll need next week, I go home.
.jpg)
Tony Singla
I applied for pupillage at Brick Court Chambers for two main reasons. First and foremost, I had really enjoyed my week as a mini-pupil: it was by far the most structured of all my mini-pupillages and the atmosphere in Chambers seemed very friendly. Secondly, I was attracted by the breadth of work on offer. At university I had been interested in all areas of law and so I wanted to go to a set which specialised in a range of different fields such as commercial and competition law.
There is no doubt that pupillage is a steep learning curve. I think the challenge for new pupils is to make the transition from academic law to practice relatively quickly. For example, in my very first week I was asked to draft Particulars of Claim in a professional negligence case against administrators whom (as we alleged) had failed to realise the full value of the company's assets. This was far more complicated than any pleadings that I had drafted at Bar School, and I also had to research the relevant areas of tort and insolvency law. Of course everyone realises that it takes time for pupils to develop; the key is to show improvement over the course of the year. In this respect I was fortunate in that I received feedback from my supervisors on all of my work. This meant that I was constantly learning new things - whether they were points of substantive law or ways to improve my drafting skills - throughout pupillage.
Pupils are not required to do administrative tasks such as photocopying etc. On the contrary, there is the opportunity to make a valuable contribution to some of the most high profile cases around. For example, during my time as a pupil I worked on two multi-billion pound cases brought against Roman Abramovich in the Commercial Court (one of which had involved Boris Berezovsky throwing a Claim Form at Mr Abramovich on Sloane Street, much to the delight of the Daily Mail). I was also involved in the test case brought by the Office of Fair Trading into banks' overdraft charges, the Competition Commission's inquiry into the big four supermarkets, and a claim by Virgin Media that BSkyB had abused its dominant position in the market for Pay TV.
From a purely legal perspective, the most satisfying case that I worked on in pupillage was Devenish Nutrition Ltd v Sanofi-Aventis SA. This was the first time that an English Court had to consider what remedies should be available to victims of cartels and the case raised a number of novel legal issues relating to restitution and exemplary damages. In my first term as a pupil I assisted with the preparation of skeleton arguments and attended the three day hearing at the High Court. In the subsequent months I was then able to follow the progress of the case as Mr Justice Lewison delivered judgment (reported at [2008] 2 WLR 637) and the claimants applied for permission to appeal. When the case reached the Court of Appeal towards the end of my pupillage, I was again involved in researching various points of law and drafting a skeleton argument.
An important part of pupillage at Brick Court Chambers is the monthly advocacy exercises which take place in front of the Tenancy Committee. These are similar to moots except that because they involve real cases (which members of Chambers have previously appeared in), it is necessary to relate one's legal submissions to the evidence at hand. The exercises provide invaluable advocacy training: the experience of being made to think quickly on my feet definitely helped when I made my first appearances in Court. Although in general pupils at Brick Court Chambers don't take on too much of their own work, I did manage to appear at a Case Management Conference in the High Court and at the hearing of an application in the Oxford County Court.
Pupillage is definitely hard work. On average I worked from 9am to 7pm and also occasionally at weekends. It can be stressful too, particularly as the tenancy decision looms. But everyone in Chambers has been through the process themselves and is incredibly supportive. All in all, I found pupillage at Brick Court Chambers to be an extremely enjoyable and rewarding year.
.jpg)
Sarah Abram
In this piece I describe a fairly representative week for me as a baby junior barrister at Brick Court Chambers.
Monday
I get into work at about 8.30, which is typical for me; I usually work from about 8.30 to around 6pm. Sometimes my hours are longer, for instance if I'm doing a hearing or a trial in Court or if I've got an urgent or particularly difficult bit of work to do in Chambers. Equally, it's not uncommon to work shorter hours from time to time, for instance if a case settles unexpectedly, leaving me with less work to do than I'd expected- the trick is to enjoy the quiet periods because another busy spell will always be just around the corner!
Today I've got to do some work on a competition law case on which I've been working as part of a team of five barristers, including two QCs and three juniors, for almost a year now (BAGS v AMRAC [2008] EWHC 1978 (Ch)); it was only the second big case in which I was instructed after I'd become a tenant. The trial of the case took place in May and June 2008 and Morgan J handed down his Judgment on part of the case in August 2008. Now I need to read the Judgment carefully and think through what it means so that I'll be able to discuss the case with the other barristers on the team, the solicitors and our clients and take instructions on what we should do next.
Tuesday
Today I've got a new set of papers to read through in advance of a hearing next week before a Master in the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court. This hearing is scheduled for the Master to consider whether an interim Third Party Debt Order should be made final. Where one party in proceedings (the "judgment debtor") has been ordered to pay a sum of money to another party (the "judgment creditor"), it's possible to apply for permission to obtain that money from a third party who owes money to the judgment debtor; the order giving this permission is a Third Party Debt Order. In this case, my client is the judgment debtor; an interim order has been made requiring one of its customers to pay money it owes my client to the judgment creditor and the question for the Master next week is whether this Order should be made final.
My job is to advise the client on what the best way to proceed is and then to represent it at the hearing: should the client oppose the making of a final order and, if so, on what basis could it do so? I spend the day researching the topic in textbooks and relevant cases. At 4pm, my instructing solicitor phones me to talk the questions through and I give my advice. She'll take my advice back to the client tomorrow and, once they've discussed things, will give me instructions on how I should proceed at the hearing next week.
Wednesday
I spend today doing some work on a commercial law case on which I'm instructed together with a QC in Chambers. The proceedings are being brought in a foreign court, but English law may be applicable to all or some of the dispute, so we're helping to provide advice on what causes of action are most likely to be in issue and what the principles of English law are on the basis of which the case would be decided. I've got to produce a draft of an Opinion which we've been working on, setting out our thinking. The QC I'm working with will go through my draft and make amendments and suggestions, before it's then sent off to the clients. I also have a chat with my leader on this case during the afternoon: I want to check that I'm heading in the right direction on one issue I'm not sure about and he's had some ideas for points that should be included, which we discuss. It's really helpful to be able to talk things through in this way: it reassures me that I'm not going off on a tangent and it helps ensure that all the important points are included in the draft Opinion at as early a stage as possible.
Thursday
This morning, I've got a case in a County Court on the outskirts of London. My instructions are for an infant settlement hearing: I haven't done one of these hearings before, so when I got the papers last week I spent a couple of hours researching this type of hearing and getting to grips with what was needed. Essentially, the case involves a claim made by a child for compensation for minor injuries she suffered in a car accident. The parties have agreed what the appropriate level of damages and costs should be, but because the claim is brought by a child, the Court holds a hearing to check that the amount of damages agreed is appropriate for the injuries suffered. The hearing is likely to be very short and so I haven't had to draft a skeleton argument in advance of it.
I head up to the County Court first thing in the morning on the tube; the hearing isn't until 10.30 but I'm always very worried about being late, so I set off ridiculously early and arrive at Court at 9.15 - the first person in the waiting room! Soon, another barrister I've met before and been against in another County Court case on the other side of London arrives for a different case and so we say hello and have a chat, before I go back to reading through my papers, preparing for the hearing. At just after 10.30, I go into the District Judge's Chamber along with the barrister on the other side, the child who made the claim and her mother. The District Judge looks through the papers and agrees that the draft Order seems fair, so she approves it - the hearing is over in only a few minutes. I then need to head back to Chambers on the tube.
Once I'm back, I spend the rest of the morning reading some papers which have come in from the other side on another case on which I'm working with a more senior member of Chambers. This case involves an application for judicial review by our clients of a decision not to grant them a subsidy under the Common Agricultural Policy; it raises issues of public and European Community law. We helped prepare the papers seeking permission to apply for judicial review about a month ago. Now the other side has sent us its Summary Grounds of Resistance, setting out why it argues that permission to apply for judicial review should not be granted. Both sets of papers go to a High Court Judge, who will decide whether permission should be given. I read the other side's response to our application and discuss it with my leader in Chambers and with our solicitors. This doesn't take too long, so I'm able to carry on with my draft Opinion on my commercial law case in the afternoon.
Friday
Today, I continue work on my draft Opinion. Of course, other cases don't just stand still while I'm working on this; I'm still getting e-mails and phone calls on other matters. When this happens, I sometimes need to turn away from the bit of work I'm doing to deal with something else. I like this variety of work: it keeps things interesting. For instance, today I get e-mails about the judicial review and Third Party Debt Order cases which I've referred to above.
I finish work at 6 and go to the pub across the road with a few of the other junior tenants from work and a couple of the current pupils (basically, whoever's around and isn't too busy). We have a few drinks and then head off our separate ways for the weekend. I'm not working this weekend; if I have to, I do sometimes come into work on a Sunday, but I try to avoid it whenever possible. Generally, it's not necessary to work on the weekend, unless there's something urgent to be done, for instance if you're in the middle of a long trial and you have to help with the drafting of written Closing Submissions. This weekend, I'm looking forward to some time off before the start of another week on Monday!
