Confessions of a Barrister

My chambers does not have a motto. We are what is termed a medium-sized traditional chambers. There are about 60 barristers and we are all strictly self-employed sole-trading businessmen (we are not allowed to take a wage), but we band together and pay an astronomically high percentage of our fees to our chambers to employ five clerks, two typists and one extremely bubbly Scottish girl whose role no one is quite sure of.

I have a desk in a room and a pigeonhole and a shelf upon which I keep my red-ribboned briefs.

My room is on the top floor down a dark and hidden corridor next to the toilet. It is home to four of us: me; Amir Saddique, a young and extremely intelligent Personal Injury (PI) and contract lawyer; Jenny Catrell-Jones, a criminal barrister in her fifties who swears like a trucker, wears frighteningly short skirts and scares the life out of most Judges; and Angus Tollman, who is a couple of years junior to me and already has a shelf bulging with cases involving serious frauds, gruesome violence and despicable sex – bastard, he probably has a red sports car as well.

Amir rarely goes to court, his practice is what we call a paper practice, every day he sits down with a pile of briefs about people who have tripped or slipped or been in car crashes or are refusing to be bound by some contractual agreement or other. For me, I would rather sit watching grass grow than do this kind of law, but Ammie has a wonderful ability to sit quietly at his desk, which is covered in Tottenham Hotspur memorabilia, and plough methodically through them.

Even though Amir has never been in the Crown Court in his life, I know that if I am going to moan about a case or a Judge or a jury, then he will feel my pain. He knows what it’s like to lose (though I’d wager it doesn’t happen very often to him).

I have always been pleasantly surprised by my relationship with other members of chambers. True, there are one or two who are stuck so firmly up their own arses that they are virtually impossible to speak to, but, on the whole, most members of my chambers are sound. We provide a service to one another, a warm, yet slightly disengaged comradeship – offering a word of advice here, a friendly ear to moan to there, and a feeling of solidarity that is important.

The names of each member of chambers appear on a copper- plated list above the black front door. We are listed in order of call, which is the date when our Inn (an ancient organisation that no one can quite remember the purpose of – more of which, later) deems that we are fit to be a barrister.

I have long concluded that there are really two types of people who become barristers – those whose parents were barristers and judges and those of us who, when we were children, watched a TV courtroom drama, probably involving an incredibly handsome advocate or a fascinating and flawed maverick genius advocate who either managed to get himself involved in an action-packed adventure that led to him ‘solving the case’, or cross-examined someone with such supreme skill that suddenly they broke down and confessed that ‘Yes, you’re right, I did it.’ You know the ones.

Both scenarios are of course utter nonsense: no one ever breaks down and confesses to anything under cross-examination. The best you can usually hope for is that you manage to make someone look a little bit shifty, which hardly lends itself to good TV drama – ‘In tonight’s episode of Courtroom QC, rugged maverick genius Silk, Arthur Morse QC, manages to make someone look a bit shifty.’

As for action-packed adventure, the nearest a barrister gets is when they have to get the night bus home after the annual Christmas drinks do.

My parents were not Judges or lawyers, they were teachers. Why did I come to the Bar? Kavanagh QC, ITV, 9pm, Thursday nights, that’s why.

Do I regret it?

Well, the jury, as they say, is still out.

Wigs, gowns, three-piece suitsand my blue bag (#ulink_26dc691c-2bf3-5259-a056-fe10fb2192a1)

There are a few things about a barrister’s appearance that will help you understand the life of a barrister and possibly a few things that will help you understand me. First, I wear a three-piece suit. You may have noticed that a lot of male barristers wear three-piece or double-breasted suits and you may have dismissed this as a sartorial throwback to a different age or that we have the fashion sense of a politician, but actually there is more to it than that. Barristers are, strictly speaking, not allowed to wear a single-breasted suit whilst in a Crown Court. True, some do, especially since more and more solicitors have taken up work in the Crown Courts, but they risk being admonished by a Judge. Indeed, I once saw a Judge bellow at a hapless and slightly unkempt solicitor advocate, screaming at him, ‘Jones, I can see oceans of your shirt wallowing about under your robes – don’t you know anything: single breasts are banned in the Crown Courts of England and Wales.’ He then refused to hear the unfortunate advocate until he’d borrowed a waistcoat.

It could have been worse, mind, he could have been wearing the wrong type of shirt; woe betide you if you wore the wrong shirt – that would be catastrophic. All male barristers must wear a stiff court collar. And legend has it that a barrister who once appeared before the High Court wearing a ‘theatre dress shirt’ – which is completely taboo – was taken out the back by the bins and flogged to within an inch of his life. As I say, probably a legend that one, but it works because none of us would dare to break that rule.

The women don’t have it that much easier – being forced to wear a white stiff collar that looks suspiciously like a nun’s wimple.

Is there any justification for these strict rules? Not really. I suppose the powers that be would say that if the standards of dress are maintained then the standards in court will also be kept up.

It’s a bit of a pain because most shops don’t sell three-piece suits, and the ones that do, sell them for extortionately high prices. Luckily, in the last couple of years, I’ve discovered Suits‘R’Us.com of Bangkok, who, for under 200 quid, will sort you out something lovely with a brand new three-piece, just as long as you aren’t too fussy about either the quality or the fit.

The next thing to notice about me is that over my shoulder I carry a blue, drawstring canvas bag, upon which you will find my initials embroidered in gold cotton – RW: Russell Winnock. Inside the bag are my robes and wig, my kit.

Now, the blue bag is important. You’ll hear a lot about it. And, very nice you might think, but, in actual fact, the blue bag is a desperate sign of failure – because it’s blue. You see, there are two types of bags used by barristers to carry their wigs and gowns, a blue one or a red one. Now, the blue one is the one you buy (or your parents buy) when you are first called to the Bar, in that moment when you proudly don your clobber for the first time, and the outfitter tells you how lovely you look and suggests that ‘sir might be interested in a special bag to put it all in’. Next minute, you’re parting with another 200 notes for a blue bag to go with the 700 you’ve just spent on a horsehair wig and nylon cape. At first, you’re quite proud of your lovely blue bag and you confidently sling it over your shoulder. But after a while you realise that the blue bag is inferior in every way to the red bag. Now, apart from the colour, the red bag is exactly the same, except that you can’t buy a red bag, someone has to buy it for you, and that someone is a Silk – or Queen’s Counsel – the international star strikers in the world of the Bar. It’s a sign that you have been involved in a ‘big case’, a case which has involved, more often than not, someone’s death, a case which required leading Counsel, a Silk; and that the Silk was so pleased with your work as a junior that he’s decided to buy you a red bag.

It is therefore a mark of success, and still having your blue bag – the one purchased by your loving mother and father in a moment of pride – means that you are a failure because you’ve never been deemed quite good enough to have a red bag.

I still have a bloody blue bag, and the pursuit of a red one has become an all-consuming passion in my professional life.

Pupilage and Ronnie Sherman (#ulink_11356658-57b1-5dda-bd84-98e43b8046e1)

In the olden days, every chambers had a Senior Clerk. Now things are slowly changing. Extempar Chambers (you remember, ‘We Don’t Judge, We Just Care’) have something called a Director of Advocacy Services.

My chambers still has a Senior Clerk. His name is Clem Wilson – and he scares the living daylights out of me.

Most people will have seen legal dramas on TV where the stereotypical depiction of barristers’ clerks is as a ruthless former East End barrow boy blessed with the cunning of an especially cunning fox, who pit their crafty, working-class street wits against those of the lumbering toffs who pay their wages – I have to say that this is entirely realistic. The only difference between the fictional clerks of TV and my Senior Clerk is that mine isn’t a cockney, he comes from Manchester, and this, somehow, makes him seem even more ferociously scary.

Most of the junior members of chambers are petrified of him. Occasionally, there is talk of a coup to oust him, but that is only after a few pints at the Erskine, when everyone is sure that he’s nowhere to be seen.

On my first day in chambers as a pupil barrister, he called me into his room.

‘You must be Russell Winnock,’ he said.

‘Yes, Mr Wilson,’ I said, ‘that’s right.’

He then gazed up at me, in a way that a cunning fox might gaze at a particularly stupid hedgehog.

‘Now, if one year from today you are lucky enough to be taken on by chambers and become a tenant, I shall cease calling you Russell Winnock and I shall call you Mr Winnock – but not until then, you understand that?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘of course.’

‘And if you’re any good, then I shall be proud to do so. But, if you’re rubbish and you make a tit out of me or chambers, I’ll get rid of you, is that understood?’

I continued to nod.

‘Now, you are a very lucky young man, Russell Winnock, because your pupil-master is going to be Mr Sherman.’

‘Fantastic,’ I said, with the enthusiasm of a collie dog, though I hadn’t the first clue who Mr Sherman was.

‘There are two things you need to know about Mr Sherman. First, he is a genius, second, like all geniuses, he has his particular foibles.’ At this point he looked at me with a strange intensity, which I have come to realise is his way of trying to indicate that he is employing some euphemism and that he wanted to see if I understood. I didn’t. I didn’t have a clue what he was going on about.

‘Alright?’

I nodded and my Senior Clerk continued, ‘Now today, Mr Sherman is at the Bailey. I suggest you wait for him in the waiting area, he’ll be around shortly to pick you up.’

‘Thank you Mr Wilson,’ I said, ‘thank you.’

I went to leave – but before I did, Clem Wilson called out to me again, ‘And Russell,’ I turned around, ‘some words of advice. For the next twelve months, don’t even try to have a personality of your own; don’t make any friends; and don’t do anything stupid.’

‘Right,’ I said, beaming in a confused way like a half-wit, as bits of my personality flaked off there and then.

I took myself off to the waiting area and sat, patiently, until eventually my pupil-master arrived. I heard him before I saw him – his great baritone voice, oozing masculine power and confidence. He was talking to one of the clerks.

‘What pupil?’

‘Your new pupil, Mr Sherman, he’s waiting for you in the foyer.’

‘No one told me I was getting a bloody pupil. Whose idea was this?’

‘Head of Chambers, Mr Sherman, he thought it would be a good thing.’

‘Well I hope she’s got big tits and makes good coffee.’