Confessions of a Barrister
Russell Winnock
From the people who brought you the bestselling Confessions of a GP.Russell is a young criminal Barrister. It’s his job to defend the people who have found themselves on the wrong side of the law – Petty thieves, career criminals, drug dealers and murderers…The scary son of a famous footballer, whose violent behaviour has got him in trouble so many times he almost knows the law better than Russell.The thief of a marital aid, who has a rather unusual defence.The 27 year old drug addict accused of stealing a push-bike, a chainsaw, a bag full of washing and a small fridge – all at the same time.And Russell’s first murder case – a young woman accused of murdering her violent boyfriend.This fascinating insight takes us behind the closed doors of the British legal world. With plenty of drama inside – and outside – of the courtroom, you’ll find out how CCTV can make or break a case, how your Facebook page could land you in jail and why on earth they wear those funny wigs!
RUSSELL WINNOCK
Confessions of a Barrister
The Friday Project
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015
Copyright © Russell Winnock 2015
Cover illustration © Katie May
Russell Winnock asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008100346
Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 9780008100339
Version: 2015-09-15
Dedication (#u7407b055-1fb3-57c7-85a1-d259f451bd1e)
To my Dad, who taught me to always try to look after
those who struggle to look after themselves
Table of Contents
Cover (#u462b13c2-28d6-54b6-8ef5-2a5512a19848)
Title Page (#ud97a77d3-ac12-5561-b7f4-d494d43fad87)
Copyright (#uf9781bd1-71d9-50a6-8a81-69e8f99d6ec7)
Dedication (#u6fd0c61c-c659-5637-89fc-580698c6052d)
Disclaimer (#u2464ed7d-7758-5a5f-8e50-031ffa056cd6)
Brian Fordyke (#u18773adc-d511-529b-a227-abdc6cc9a5d7)
How do you defend someone who you know is guilty? (#uc6788fd2-36cf-51f2-b2f0-e8050cfe3dfc)
Chambers (#u8cbf07a2-0902-50d1-8550-4f28ba520f04)
Wigs, gowns, three-piece suitsand my blue bag (#ua3d68225-447c-5331-868e-74e172626583)
Pupilage and Ronnie Sherman (#u06d45bd5-fa44-5bd5-b2ec-acec215761f7)
What’s the difference between a solicitor and a barrister? (#u25c22031-920c-5fa1-9562-fcee219e2846)
West v West (#ud13049e6-63ae-557e-a978-43aee6519230)
NIHWTLBOE (#u0d9023d0-a63d-571c-a331-31194e51286b)
Instinct and the case of Harvey Mannerley (#u01ccfa73-2d94-548c-903f-eba7801f71dd)
The ten greatest trials of all time (#u6cfae8a5-9d64-59ed-b202-dbd66651b825)
Dinners, beers and ‘what would you do if you weren’t a barrister?’ (#u38be9c8f-63c9-5048-af78-22e2d0de68fa)
The importance of pages (#u6951832e-81ff-5ed3-b2d4-7339ecaa4efe)
A tale of three Judges (#litres_trial_promo)
Part 1 – His Honour Judge Percy and the case of Tommy Nutall (#litres_trial_promo)
Part 2 – His Honour Judge Marmaduke and the case of Peter Hilton (#litres_trial_promo)
Part 3 – Judge Mariner QC and thecase of Yusuf Salam (#litres_trial_promo)
The kangaroo court of Lincoln Prison (#litres_trial_promo)
Escape from Lincoln Prison (#litres_trial_promo)
A chambers meeting (#litres_trial_promo)
R v Kenny McCloud (#litres_trial_promo)
The ten greatest fictional lawyers (#litres_trial_promo)
Meeting Kenny McCloud (#litres_trial_promo)
Cross-examination and the case of Shandra Whithurst (#litres_trial_promo)
The City Magistrates Court (#litres_trial_promo)
The Magistrates Court in the country (#litres_trial_promo)
The fall of Kenny McCloud (#litres_trial_promo)
STRIKE! (#litres_trial_promo)
Football, violence, and the case of Archie Finch (#litres_trial_promo)
The unwilling criminal (#litres_trial_promo)
Wigs and gowns (#litres_trial_promo)
Murder (#litres_trial_promo)
Facebook (#litres_trial_promo)
The case of the sizzling Gypsy sisters (#litres_trial_promo)
Bail (#litres_trial_promo)
Silk (#litres_trial_promo)
The ten greatest Crown Courts in the land (#litres_trial_promo)
The Court of Appeal and the case of R v J (a minor) (#litres_trial_promo)
The case against Tasha Roux (#litres_trial_promo)
Girls (#litres_trial_promo)
Touting and solicitor’s wars (#litres_trial_promo)
The case according to Tasha Roux (#litres_trial_promo)
Self-defence and politicians (#litres_trial_promo)
Consent (#litres_trial_promo)
Domestic violence and the case of Carl and Leanne Stafford (#litres_trial_promo)
Bradley Edwards and the ‘Furry Fuckers’ (#litres_trial_promo)
The story of Charlie Parkman QC (#litres_trial_promo)
The queue at HMP Stoneywood and the case of Sam Wheldon (#litres_trial_promo)
Disclosure (#litres_trial_promo)
Goodbye to Johnny Richardson and hello to Lilly Spencer (#litres_trial_promo)
Bad character (#litres_trial_promo)
The trial of Tasha Roux day one – the robing room bullies (#litres_trial_promo)
The trial of Tasha Roux day two – the jury (#litres_trial_promo)
Roger Fish’s opening speech (#litres_trial_promo)
The witnesses for the Crown (#litres_trial_promo)
Dinner with Kelly Backworth (#litres_trial_promo)
Tasha gives her evidence (#litres_trial_promo)
Charlie’s speech (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Disclaimer (#u7407b055-1fb3-57c7-85a1-d259f451bd1e)
This book is dedicated to the Judges, barristers, solicitors, court staff, clients and criminals who have inspired the stories. All names and events have been changed, but each story and event has its genesis in some case or incident that has actually happened.
Brian Fordyke (#u7407b055-1fb3-57c7-85a1-d259f451bd1e)
The buzzer. The buzzer of doom. The buzzer that indicates that the jury have reached a verdict and are now ready to come back into the courtroom to deliver it. Guilty or not guilty, that’s what the buzzer means. And as soon as I hear it, the pace of my heart starts to quicken and I feel the prickle of sweat forming under my wig.
I look behind me to the dock where my client, a pockmarked and serially dishonest rogue and drug addict by the name of Brian Fordyke, sits, charged with shoplifting. The trial has not gone particularly well for him.
I’m in court sixteen of the City Crown Court. It’s a court where odd things happen, far away from the gaze of the media and the high-profile cases. It is tucked away, ancient, dusty and largely ignored. It is where I ply my trade as a barrister. In court sixteen the buzzer is followed by the footsteps – heavy, foreboding footsteps on the wooden floor that leads from the jury room to the courtroom: clomp, clomp, clomp.
And with every footstep, the verdict ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’, happiness or sadness, freedom or incarceration is brought a clomping step nearer.
The door from the jury room to the courtroom opens and in they walk. The usual vengeful suspects: my jury, Brian Fordyke’s jury. There’s the little old lady who has sucked Everton Mints religiously throughout the trial; the bloke with the tattoos who sat and stared utterly oblivious to my attempts to persuade him of Brian Fordyke’s innocence; the middle-class man who has worn a suit throughout; the hippy lady in the flowing blouse who chose to affirm rather than swear on the Bible (always nice to get a couple of liberals on the jury); and the pretty girl to whom I found myself paying far too much attention during my closing speech. These and the seven others clomp towards their place in the jury box and sit down.
At this point I watch them carefully. I know that if they look towards me or the dock then they will acquit my client, if they don’t, it’s curtains.
They look straight ahead, steely-faced. There isn’t so much as a glimpse in my direction or towards the dock. This isn’t good.
The foreman is the man with tattoos – for a second I try to persuade myself that this might be a good thing, that the man with the tattoos might have a bit of a colourful history himself, but I know I’m grasping at greasy straws. I know what is about to happen only too well.
The Clerk of the Court gets up and clears her throat: ‘Will the foreman of the jury please stand.’ Tattoo man gets up.
‘Have the jury reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed?’
‘Yes.’ His voice is deep and gravelly without a hint of reasonable doubt.
‘Do you find the defendant, Brian Fordyke, guilty or not guilty of the theft of a marital aid from Mr Nookies Adult Emporium?’
‘Guilty.’
Damn.
‘And that is the verdict of you all?’
‘It is.’
I hear my client let out a little sigh from the dock as the Judge replaces his glasses and looks disapprovingly at me. Why is he looking at me? I didn’t steal the bloody marital aid; and why do we have to call it a marital aid? I mean, who uses that term – no one! Why can’t we just say dildo?
‘Mr Russell Winnock,’ says the Judge.
I rise obediently to my feet. ‘Your Honour?’ I reply.
‘Your client has been found guilty on the most overwhelming of evidence.’
‘Well … Yes.’ I try to put up some kind of counter proposition to this, but the Judge, a ruthless and often confused old codger by the name of Marmaduke, is having none of it.
‘In fact, Mr Winnock, this case shouldn’t have even been in my court.’
‘Well, Your Honour …’ I’m stumbling now, looking for words, but nothing except air leaves my mouth.
‘This is the type of case that should have been heard by …’ he pauses ‘… the Magistrates.’ His Honour, Judge Marmaduke, spits out the words ‘the Magistrates’ as though he were talking about a group of lepers.
‘Who advised this man –’ he points in the direction of the now guilty Brian Fordyke as he shouts at me – ‘to elect to come to the Crown Court rather than,’ another pause, ‘the Magistrates?’
‘Er, me, Your Honour. That was me.’
‘You, Winnock!’
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
‘Why the devil did you do that? You’ve wasted thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money.’
‘Well, Your Honour, I believe that all men and women should have the chance to be tried by their peers.’
‘Well, your client was tried by his peers.’
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
‘And they convicted him.’
‘They did, Your Honour.’
‘Of the theft of this, this …’ he is gesticulating wildly, his eyes bulging. Finally, without finishing his sentence, and with his face a coronary shade of incensed purple, he turns to my client. ‘Brian Fordyke, stand – you will go to prison for fifteen years.’
There is a gasp from around the courtroom – even the jury gasp. I jump up to my feet: ‘Your Honour, fifteen years? The dildo was only worth eight quid.’
‘Alright then, fifteen weeks,’ spits Marmaduke, and with that he flounces out of the court.
The jury look at me, I look at them and the little old lady turns to the woman next to her and says in a loud stage whisper – ‘God love him.’
I sigh, it wasn’t meant to be like this, my life as a criminal barrister. I had imagined it so very differently. I had imagined that I would be revered in court, loved by clients and solicitors, respected by Judges and opponents. I had imagined a life of serious, headline-worthy cases, trials at the Old Bailey, interviews with Joshua Rosenberg, where I would effortlessly say things like, ‘Joshua, no, bless you, your interpretation of the meaning of the decision in the case of Galbraith is quite wrong, let me help you out.’ And then there’s the money, I had always imagined that being a barrister would lend itself to having a few quid. I had imagined having a fast red sports car, a penthouse flat and an extensive fine wine collection. I imagined having handmade suits, a little place in France and a posh girlfriend who looked good in jodhpurs.
In short, when I decided to study law at Leeds University, some thirteen years ago, I imagined that I would become successful, powerful, rich, highly sexed and, yes, probably a bit of a tosser. Sadly, having been a barrister for nine years and having just turned 31, only one of those ambitions has come to fruition – and it isn’t the sex bit.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t enjoy being a barrister – I truly love my job (well, most of it) and there are parts of the job that I would never want to give up. I still see it as a privilege, I still see it as performing an important function; I quite like my clients, even the pervs and weirdos; I enjoy the cut and thrust of a trial and I even like the old-fashioned ways, the pomp and ceremony, wigs and gowns and bowing, and the peculiar language that is unique to courts. I like all that, but, in truth, being a criminal barrister today, after all the cuts and the changes and closures, is a bit like arriving at a party at the point when everyone is already getting into a taxi or passed out on the couch – fun’s been had, but I ain’t getting any of it.
This book is about all of it – the fun and the pomp, the seriousness and the stress. It is about the weirdos and Judges and clients, the opponents you respect and the opponents you despise. It is about, I hope, my attempts to do my best and let you into a few little secrets along the way. It is about being a barrister.
How do you defend someone who you know is guilty? (#u7407b055-1fb3-57c7-85a1-d259f451bd1e)
As a criminal barrister, the first question I get asked when people find out what I do for a living is ‘How do you defend someone who you know is guilty?’ It’s probably the first question you thought of when you picked up this book. Well, I’ll tell you.
After Brian Fordyke’s trial, I went down to see him – it’s what you do. He was sat alone in his cell. It was small and grey, with nothing in it but a table and two chairs – it is the place a person is put before a big part of their life is taken from them – their freedom – and it’s every bit as soulless as you would imagine. On the table someone had scratched the words, ‘Marmaduke is a Cock-Knocker’ – which seemed entirely apposite. I sat down opposite my rather forlorn and puzzled-looking client; thankfully, I didn’t detect any bitterness being directed towards me – which was something at least. I considered cracking a little joke – maybe, suggesting that on the occasion of him being convicted of his fiftieth offence of shoplifting, the police and courts might commemorate the occasion and have a whip round and present him with a small engraved tankard to mark the occasion – but I thought better of it.
That is the worst part of the job: when someone has put their faith in you, entrusted you to maintain their liberty, defend their name, and you lose. Because you both lose – but the only difference is, you’ll be going home tonight.
‘Well, Brian,’ I said, trying to muster up a bit of a smile, ‘for a second there I thought the Judge had gone mad. Fifteen years, pfft.’
He smiled weakly at me. ‘Do you know, Russ, on this occasion, I actually wasn’t guilty.’
‘I know, mate.’ I added, ‘But, the CCTV wasn’t very good for us, was it?’
He shrugged in acknowledgement of the utterly damning Close Circuit Television footage that showed him in HD quality fiddling with his flies, before placing the offending marital aid down his trousers and making to leave the shop.
‘And, I suppose, if you put yourself in the jury’s position,’ I continued, ‘they were never going to believe that you were simply attempting to compare the, er, marital aid, to your own tackle.’
He shrugged again and it hit me that actually, if I had been a juror I would probably have convicted him as well.
But that isn’t my job, I am not there to decide if someone is guilty or innocent. That is why the question ‘How do you defend someone who you know is guilty?’ – which every barrister is asked by everyone they ever speak to at every dinner party or family gathering they ever attend – is so perplexing. We don’t know if the person is guilty or not, we only do what our clients tell us. And if they tell us that they were sticking a dildo down their trousers because they were buying a saucy present for the Mrs and wanted to compare the present to their own appendage to ensure that they didn’t get anything too big, then that’s the defence which we will place before a jury, even if it’s probably a load of cobblers. Because all of us, whether we like it or not, are innocent until proven guilty. So it’s not a dilemma at all, it’s very simple – if someone tells us that they are not guilty, even after we’ve told them that the evidence is strong, even after we have told them that they will be making things far worse for themselves if they have a trial, then we have to take them at their word, our own feelings and opinions are irrelevant. We put forward the points as best we can, and let others decide about guilt or innocence, right or wrong. That is our job.
I shook hands with Brian Fordyke. He’d been to prison before, for him fifteen weeks offered no fear and no surprises. He would come out after about six weeks, his craving for whatever drug he had been using would probably return, his desire to go straight probably forgotten, and before long, he’d be back in court, waiting for the buzzer and the jury’s verdict. And then, because it would almost certainly be ‘guilty’, he would be back in prison for another couple of months. That was his life.
And me, well, I limped back to chambers to prepare myself for the next brief, the next case – in the hope that, perhaps, it would be more exciting, more successful and more lucrative than the last one. Perhaps it would be the case that would make my name.
Chambers (#ulink_a8bbe70c-1206-5371-9d81-0d29a1c5131a)
I’m not proud of this, but by the time I get back to my chambers, Gray’s Buildings, after a trial, I’ve usually forgotten about my client. I know that sounds callous and cold, but the brain of a barrister has a habit of jettisoning things quite quickly – it has to, otherwise we’d end up demented, our every thought haunted by the ghosts of cases long gone. Yes, okay, there are occasions when you wake up in the middle of the night, sit bolt upright and think – ‘Why didn’t I just ask that question?’ or, actually, more likely, ‘Why did I have to ask that one last stupid question?’ But usually we go to court, we do our cases, we come back from court, and somewhere in between leaving court and arriving at our next destination, the gruesome details of the last client become lost in the canopy of our minds.
They’re funny things, chambers. They don’t really seem to belong to the modern age. Despite the desperate attempts of some of the big City sets to employ practice managers and IT consultants and PR gurus, they almost all still have a sniff of the eighteenth century about them, when a man could conduct a court case whilst simultaneously eating a hearty dinner and enjoying a flagon of ale before going on to enjoy the delights of Madame Pomfrey’s girls on Petticoat Lane.
Gray’s Buildings is tucked down a back street and about a ten-minute walk from the City Crown Court. It has seen better days and as a building is remarkable only for its 1970s pebble-dash and a massive oak door that is painted gallows black. Next door is a sandwich shop, across the road is the Erskine Pub and next door to that is the super-duper, ultra-modern Extempar Chambers – motto ‘We Don’t Judge, We Just Care.’ Extempar Chambers is the future, or so we are told. They have about 150 members, all of whom have a First Class degree from Cambridge or come from a long line of High Court Judges. They have fifteen clerks who all appear to be former models and a liveried van to deliver briefs to your doorstep. They have corporate days out, hunting and white-water rafting, they even have a motion sensor espresso machine (whatever that is). They have contracts with multinational companies, an interactive website and a career plan for each member.
But, surely all of that counts for nothing when you’re faced with the likes of Brian Fordyke – then, all the motion sensor espresso machines and smiley clerks in the world can’t compensate for the ability to talk and act like a normal human being.
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.’
‘It’s a boy, Mr Sherman, his name’s Russell Winnock.’
‘A boy? What, like in short trousers?’
‘No.’
‘Oh for god’s sake. The last thing I want is some young lad hanging around me – pupils are a bloody nuisance at the best of times.’
I soon realised what Clem Wilson meant by Ronnie Sherman’s foibles: he was a hopeless chauvinist, misogynist and snob and an even more hopeless alcoholic. He had clearly been given me as an unwanted gift in a desperate attempt to re-invigorate his interest in a flagging career, because Ronnie Sherman had become one of those old barristers who spends more time talking about the great cases of the past than preparing the mediocre cases of the present.
My six months with Ronnie were indeed an education. I learnt how to do a bail application without having any clue what your case actually was; I learnt how to drink a bottle of wine and two pints of bitter during lunch, after which I would watch my pupil-master either swerve and sway on his feet as he embarked on a lengthy and meandering cross-examination, or engineer an adjournment because he was not actually capable of embarking upon any cross-examination at all. I learnt how to ignore Judges, solicitors and junior clerks; I learnt how to lie to a wife or loved one about my whereabouts and I learnt how I was entering the profession at the worst time ever. ‘Russell,’ he would tell me, ‘you should have been doing this job twenty years ago – the money was great and everyone knew their place. Not like now.’
But amazingly, despite this reluctance to have me hanging round him, and despite the fact that he was mostly pissed after two o’clock, Ronnie Sherman did teach me some vital things about being a barrister: he taught me how to properly address a Judge, how to conduct yourself in court and about the strange rituals and customs of the Bar and the judicial system; but most of all, he taught me – and I’m not sure that he would admit to this – about how to treat your clients. You see, despite his bluff snobbery, pomposity and supposed antipathy towards most other sectors of society, when Ronnie Sherman was with his clients, he was transformed. When he entered a cell or a conference room, he would instantly change; he would listen gently and carefully, instinctively understanding and empathetic. Every client, regardless of the charge they faced, their background or history – tragic or stupid – would be treated with compassion and courtesy. In an instant he could put a young lad facing prison for the first time at ease, or coax a confession out of the worst kind of sex offender. And that ability – to build a trusting relationship with your client – is possibly the most important that a barrister can possess. Because the law isn’t just about, well, laws and statutes and being learned or clever, it’s about people. As a barrister you’re becoming involved in a person’s life at a time when that life has gone wrong.
And that, dear reader, is the beauty of the pupilage system. A young barrister, fresh from Bar School and totally wet behind the ears, spends the first six months of his or her career doing nothing but sitting behind their pupil-master, observing the right and wrong way to do things.
A couple of years after being my pupil-master, the Lord Chancellor’s department decided to make Ronnie a Judge; surprisingly, considering his outward disapproval of most people’s lives, they made him a family Judge.
What’s the difference between a solicitor and a barrister? (#ulink_ca95cf3f-d4b5-5017-b36e-820e1ec479de)
One afternoon, I walked through the foyer of chambers, heading to the room where our pigeonholes are kept. There is one for each barrister, set out, like everything else in this job, strictly in order of seniority or call. I checked mine on the off-chance that there was either a massive cheque or a massive brief nestling inside it. There was neither, only a flier advertising the services of a company offering me a low-interest loan to pay my tax bill. I groaned and went to make my way up a back staircase to my room.
This was a mistake. The back stairs took me past the Senior Clerk’s office – the office of Clem Wilson, and as I walked past his door, he spotted me.
‘Mr Winnock.’
I considered pretending not to hear, but knew that that wouldn’t make any difference: if Clem Wilson wanted to talk to me, then the conversation would happen one way or another.
‘Hi Clem,’ I proffered, ‘everything okay?’
‘Come in and sit down,’ he suggested wearily. I felt like a piece of lettuce being addressed by a slug.
‘I’m a bit worried, Mr Winnock,’ he said.
‘Worried?’ I asked him. ‘Why?’
Now, at this stage, it’s worth noting that I had lost a trial earlier that day and Clem Wilson will already have heard. You see, he hears everything, he knows everything, he’s like the East German government of the 1960s and 70s, he has people everywhere.
But Clem Wilson won’t give a toss about the result of my trial, or whether justice was done or not. In fact, it wouldn’t matter to him if I lost every case I ever did. No, all Clem Wilson cares about is keeping the solicitors happy.
I suppose it’s about time that I explained the relationship between a solicitor and a barrister. After the ‘how do you defend someone who’s guilty’ question, this is the second most popular question we’re asked: ‘What’s the difference between a barrister and a solicitor?’
Well, though the answer is no longer as straightforward as it once was, I suppose a good way of looking at it is this: solicitors are akin to GPs – if you are ill, they are the first port of call to give you the once-over, prescribe a bit of medicine if it’s not too serious, and listen to your tales of woe. Barristers are a bit like consultants – the ones in the operating theatre wielding the scalpel. And just as in medicine, if anything is seriously wrong when you go to a GP you’re referred to a consultant, so it is in law. If the solicitor can’t sort out your problem then you’ll be referred to a barrister who will be the person who represents you in the Crown Court or similar Civil and Family Courts.
These days, however, things have changed. Now solicitors are also allowed to wield the scalpel, so to speak. It used to be that barristers were easy to spot, because barristers wore wigs and solicitors didn’t – now some solicitors even wear wigs. Where a decade ago it was rare for a solicitor to be seen in the Crown Court as very few had bothered to get the extra qualification needed to appear there – now, it’s commonplace, and sadly for us barristers, the result is a reduction in our work.
This is a worry for us and a worry for Clem Wilson, because he’s paid a percentage of all the income from chambers, so the less work into chambers means a potential reduction in his wages. And this is why he is keen to keep solicitors happy, because he wants them to continue to instruct his barristers rather than do it themselves, or even worse, instruct other sets of chambers, such as, heaven forbid, Extempar Chambers. And, to a certain degree, that relationship works. Clem keeps the solicitors happy, the solicitors instruct us to do their cases and we all get paid. The situation only breaks down if one of his barristers upsets the solicitors.
‘I’ve been looking at your diary,’ he told me.
‘Okay.’
‘It’s not very good, Mr Winnock, is it?’
‘Well,’ I replied, ‘it’s hard for all of us at the moment – do you know there were fifteen solicitors in the robing room today, fifteen of them! How can we compete with that?’
Clem Wilson looked unimpressed. ‘Well, some seem to be managing it better than others.’
That remark was quite cutting – he’s calling me a failure. I shrugged.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘perhaps it’s about time you considered something else.’
I felt my eyes widen – ‘Something else? Like what? I’ve only ever known the law, what else could I do?’
He tried to smile in a reassuring way at me, but it came out as a smirk. ‘No, I don’t mean leave the profession – well, not yet, anyway. I mean another area of law.’
‘What, like Chancery or commercial?’
This appealed to me. Chancery and commercial barristers earn massive amounts of money, they are the true fat cats of the Bar. They are the boys – and they are usually male – who drive sports cars and have fancy apartments and expensive suits. The idea of becoming a Chancery barrister was attractive.
Clem Wilson laughed spitefully.
‘No, I was thinking family law.’
The image of me in a sports car evaporated, and was replaced by one of me in that most desperately sad of places: the Family Court. The Family Bar is even harder up than the Criminal Bar. The Family Courts are where people go to pore over the ashes of their failed marriages and broken families. The barristers who appear there are usually gentle souls who wear woolly cardigans under their robes, whilst the solicitors are the exact opposite – hard, horrible, trenchant – iron-willed storm troopers who will promise their client that they will take their former partner ‘to the cleaners’ – and then do everything they can to make good their vow.
I have no interest in the Family Courts. I hadn’t been there for over five years, when I had found myself literally banging my head against a wall as my client, a rather stinky woman, refused to agree to allow her child to be picked up from McDonald’s at 5.30 every Friday for a contact session with the father, insisting instead that it should be 6pm from Burger King. No, I am a criminal barrister – we are the heavyweight boxers of the legal world, the strutting, posing cocks of the robing room – there is no way I’m going to wear a cardie and help society’s failed former lovers sort out who gets the telly and who gets the cat.
Clem Wilson looked at me.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think the Family Courts may be the future for you, Mr Winnock, what with your liberal conscience and that.’
I’m not sure how he’s concluded that I have a liberal conscience.
‘That’s why I have taken a brief for you at the Family Court tomorrow.’
‘What? No. Thanks Clem, but it’s not for me.’
‘It’s for Whinstanley and Cooper,’ he said, then repeated slowly and with more than a hint of menace, ‘Whinstanley and Cooper,’ in an attempt to scare me. It worked.
‘They are a massive firm, Mr Winnock,’ he added, ‘they bring in lots of work to chambers, and they need someone to do an injunction hearing tomorrow. You are available.’
I sighed. I considered refusing. I considered digging my heels in. But I knew that any resistance would be futile. A big firm of solicitors wanted to instruct a barrister for a hearing and I was to be that barrister. They were far too important to chambers for Clem Wilson to refuse the work. I sighed, and before I could say another word, my Senior Clerk had placed in my hand a small bundle of papers tied with pink ribbon. On the front were the words West v West.
Silently I left the Senior Clerk’s room.
So, what is the difference between a barrister and a solicitor? Well, the answer goes far beyond who wears a wig and who doesn’t. Whilst some of the traditional differences are being diminished and done away with, in other ways, the distinction is still there and many of us would argue it is just as important as it has always been. Hopefully it will become clearer as my story continues, and, as it happens, the case of West v West isn’t a bad place to start to show the complexity of the solicitor–barrister relationship …
West v West (#ulink_644661f7-2afb-5914-b636-8548ad188418)
I placed my hateful blue bag of shame on the floor then plonked the brief of West v West on my desk, making sure that it landed with a disdainful thud, causing my conscientious roommate Amir to look up. He was busily reading a rather crusty, yellowing law book.
‘Oh dear, you don’t look very happy,’ he suggested and I harrumphed and muttered something about having lost a case that morning. Amir grinned at me – ‘Just get it billed mate, and think about the cheque,’ he said, which is the barrister’s equivalent of being told that there are plenty more fish in the sea, just after being dumped.
He’s right though – just move on to the next case, that is what we do. I looked down at the papers in West v West.
I unwrapped the pink ribbon and started to read it. Why pink ribbon? I have no idea, but briefs are wrapped in pink ribbon, they always have been and they always will be (apart from Court of Appeal briefs, they are wrapped in white ribbon, yep, beats me too).
I am instructed to represent Mrs Phi Li West; a Thai woman who came to the UK eight years ago to marry Mr Graeme West. Things were great at first (aren’t they always?), but don’t appear to be now, because now Mrs West wants an injunction and non-molestation order from the court. This will prevent Mr West from going near her and using any violence or making any threat to harm her.
Okay. So far so good, I have enough of a recollection of this procedure to feel confident that I can obtain the injunction as instructed.
I read Mrs West’s statement.
I read that she came over to the UK having met Mr West at a function. Yeah, ‘function’ – only if ‘function’ is the Thai word for mail-order-bride website. I stopped myself. I know I’m only being cynical because I’m sulking at the prospect of being in the Family Courts.
Amir looked up from his desk. ‘So, where are you tomorrow?’
I mumbled my answer miserably, ‘Family Court.’
‘What?’ he exclaimed. ‘I didn’t know you did family work?’
‘I don’t,’ I said, trying to retain my pride and dignity, ‘I’m just doing it as a favour to Clem and the solicitors, you know how things are.’
He shot me a genuine smile, because he’s a genuinely nice guy. ‘Best make sure you’ve got your woolly cardie and sandals out of the back of your wardrobe.’
I smiled. But I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want to be doing a case about a failed marriage.
The rest of Mrs Phi West’s story is a rather sad one. They’d been trying for a child, but hadn’t managed to conceive. At which point Mr West had, allegedly, started to become controlling of Mrs West, not allowing her out with her friends, hacking into her phone and email accounts, that kind of thing, until finally, they’d had a fight and he had grabbed her round the neck, causing her abrasions and some swelling.
As it happens, as I write this, I’m single. And, when I read stories like the Wests’ I’m quite glad that I’m single. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some kind of cynical old bastard who’s been cruelly savaged by a love affair, or some kind of commitment-phobe who goes around trying to bed as many women as he can in an attempt to cover up for inadequacies elsewhere, I just haven’t met the right girl yet. Which is actually my mother’s phrase, but I’m happy to adopt it.
I suppose Graeme West thought he’d met the right girl. I suppose he thought that he’d create a little family and could live happily and contentedly ever after – well, he got that wrong.
The next day I turned up at the City Family Court Centre, a massive and rather ugly modern building constructed at a time before austerity. I didn’t need my blue bag – no wigs and gowns in the Family Court.
The atmosphere inside this court is different. Whereas in a Crown Court there is always an air of excitement and suspense, here there is just despondency and despair. These people aren’t bad, they’re just unhappy.
I stood in the reception area and watched as a little toddler tentatively meandered away from a girl who looked about nineteen years old and who I assumed was his mother. She sat looking vacantly into the middle distance as he waddled towards a Yucca plant, fell into it and started to cry. The girl went to comfort him, hoisting him onto her hip in that instinctive way that only mothers can. She put a dummy into his mouth and he stopped crying and stared at the offending plant.
A door slammed and a fat man stormed into the reception area. He turned and shouted back towards the door, pointing at it angrily. ‘I don’t care what you or anyone else says, I don’t bloody care.’ Then he flung his hands in the air and made a kind of growling noise, interspersed with various swear words.
I sighed and wondered if in ten or twenty years’ time, one of the toddler’s abiding memories of childhood will be of a Yucca plant and a man shouting at the City Family Court.
I’d been told to expect a trainee solicitor called Kelly. I looked around for her, then back at the growling man who was now being moved away by a court usher, when she made herself known to me.
‘Are you Russell Winnock?’
I turned around.
‘I am,’ I said, ‘are you Kelly?’
She didn’t smile as she acknowledged me, instead she looked at me with total disinterest. Kelly Backworth was quite stunningly beautiful. She had shoulder-length blonde hair, eyes that wouldn’t sit still and full lips. She had colour and youth and hope and expectation that shone out amongst the grey despondency of the waiting room. I wondered what she looked like when she smiled. I wished she had smiled at me.
‘I’ve put Mrs West in a conference room around there,’ she told me and I beamed back at her.
She then led me into a small conference room where Mrs Phi West was waiting.
Christ, Mrs West was stunningly beautiful as well. She had a long slick of black hair that made its way down the side of her unfeasibly perfect face and onto her chest. She didn’t smile at me either.
Kelly Backworth sat down next to Phi West and they both looked at me with grim disinterest, which was confusing – surely, they both need me for what was about to happen.
‘Right,’ I said, ‘Mrs West. Can I call you Phi?’ I pronounced her name Fee, as in fee-fi-fo-fum.
‘It pronounced “pie”,’ she replied in a surprisingly grating, heavily accented voice, ‘but no call me Porky Pie.’ She looked venomously at me as she said this. ‘He call me Porky Pie. No call me Porky Pie.’
‘Of course,’ I stuttered, ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
I introduced myself, as Kelly started making notes and Phi, not Porky Phi, stared at me.
‘Right,’ I said, ‘today’s hearing should be fairly straightforward.’
I then tried to describe the procedure I think the court will follow. Although, to be honest, it’d been that long since I’d done a Family Court injunction, I could be kidding all of us, so I’m glad when I’m interrupted by a knock on the door. It’s my opponent, Vicky Smith. Vicky is from my chambers. She is friendly, a few years senior to me, and a very good family barrister.
She smiled at me. ‘Can I have a word?’ she asked, and I mumbled something to Porky Phi and Kelly and made my way out of the room – I have to admit it’s a big relief.
‘Russ,’ she said, ‘Clem told me that you were doing this – what’s that all about?’
‘Just doing the solicitors a favour,’ I proffered unconvincingly.
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘well you’re going to love this.’ She added, ‘Follow me.’
I followed Vicky into another small conference room further up the corridor. In it sat a nervous-looking man with strawberry-blonde hair. He is Mr Graeme West. He didn’t look at all like I imagined. He looked respectable and normal, handsome too, to be fair, in an outdoors type of way. I find it difficult to picture him leafing through his wife’s iPhone or grabbing her around the neck.
‘Mr West,’ said Vicky, ‘this is Mr Winnock, he is representing your wife today. Will you please show him what you showed me earlier.’
Mr West unbuttoned his shirt and revealed a perfect and newly scabbed burn mark in the shape of a large sausage branded into his chest. Ouch.
‘I don’t suppose your client’s mentioned this to you, has she?’ asked Vicky.
I shook my head.
‘Let’s go outside.’ I followed Vicky outside and she immediately adopted a quiet, informal tone – ‘Russ,’ she said, ‘that’s where she attacked him with a pair of curling tongs just the other day after a row about a new car she wanted.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘Surely not.’ I wasn’t sure if I could quite picture Porky Phi carrying out such a venomous act of violence.
‘He’s absolutely terrified of her,’ Vicky continued. ‘I’ll be straight with you – as soon as a Judge sees that, there’s no way on God’s green earth that he’s going to give you your injunction.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, which I realised straight away was rubbish – Vicky was absolutely right.
‘Look,’ Vicky continued, ‘he just wants out. He thinks next time she’ll kill him in his sleep. He tells me that if you drop the injunction, he’ll accept cross-undertakings not to see or hurt each other – and he’ll bung in the house.’
I considered this quickly before I responded.
‘The house?’
‘Yes, and it’s mortgage free. He tells me that as far as he’s concerned, she can have it all. It’s a really great offer for her; it’ll mean that when the marriage ends, they won’t have to go through a prolonged process of ancillary relief.’
I nodded, trying to remember what a prolonged process of ancillary relief was.
‘So, let me get this right,’ I said carefully, ‘no injunction, he agrees not to hurt her, she agrees not to hurt him, and he gives her the house.’
‘Precisely.’
I wondered if there was a catch in this, if I was being done up like a kipper by a more experienced hand. But Vicky wasn’t like that, and she was right, any Judge worth his salt was not going to be impressed by the fact that the supposed victim attacked her assailant with a hairdressing appliance.
‘I’ll take instructions.’
I made my way back to the conference room, where Porky Phi and the incredibly aloof Kelly were still sat.
‘Hi,’ I said with forced positivity. ‘Good news, I think.’
Porky’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as she awaited my ‘good news’.
‘Mr West’s barrister has told me that if you drop your injunction and the two of you make what’s known as cross-undertakings, which are a promise that you make before a Judge, not to use violence against each other, he’ll give you the house.’
‘The house?’ said Phi.
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘That’s pretty good, isn’t it?’
‘I have to promise not to use any violence?’
I nodded again as Phi contemplated this, biting her bottom lip as she did.
‘I want the car as well,’ she said.
‘The car?’
‘Yes,’ said Phi, ‘the shiny silver one with no roof.’
I looked at her, then looked at Kelly for some kind of reaction – there was none. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘the shiny silver car. Leave it with me.’
I went back to speak to Vicky. ‘She wants the silver car with no roof,’ I said.
Vicky’s face formed itself into an expression of exasperation. ‘Bitch,’ she said, ‘I’ve half a mind to tell her to sling her hook and advise my lad to take her on before a Judge.’
I shrugged. ‘Those are my instructions.’
‘Right,’ said Vicky, ‘stay here.’
Five minutes later, Vicky returned to tell me, grudgingly, that Phi can have the silver convertible, which actually turns out to be a pretty nifty Audi TT.
Half an hour after that, we were before a District Judge, a rather kindly fella called Pertwie, who nodded with indifference as we told him that both parties had agreed not to use or threaten violence against each other, and Mr West had agreed to give his wife a five hundred thousand pound mortgage-free house and a fancy German sports car.
I left court feeling fairly happy with my day’s work. As I did, Mrs West smiled and shook my hand. ‘Thank you, Mr Winnock,’ she said.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ I said, modestly, ‘just doing my job.’
She smiled again. I turned to Kelly, hoping for an equally gushing response from her, but I didn’t get one.
I walked back to chambers with a spring in my step. I wondered if I’d get any more work from Whinstanleys, I wondered what I’d have to do to make the lovely Kelly Backworth smile at me. I quickly forgot about Mr West and his burnt chest.
NIHWTLBOE (#ulink_52eb036d-0f89-5a60-bdaa-e256aa6a546b)
After rewarding myself with lunch of beef and ale pie and a pint of bitter, I returned to chambers, walking in through the old front door and checking my pigeonhole, where I found a cheque for 55 pounds, payment for a bail application I did six months ago, and a note telling me to go immediately to the Senior Clerk’s room.
I assumed that I was going to be praised. I assumed that I was going to be thanked for doing a sterling job securing my client a car and a house worth nearly half a million quid. In my mind I was about to have a conversation with Clem, in which he begged me to do more Family Court work and I told him that I’d think about it.
I was wrong. I was so wrong.
As I entered his office, I could see that Clem was accompanied by two women. One was the surly Kelly Backworth, who was sat looking sheepishly at her feet, and next to her was a rather butch- looking woman whose facial expression reminded me of a volcano that had been grumbling for a few months and had now forced the evacuation of a nearby town. Clem was sat at his desk. As I walked in, smiling, he and Butch woman looked up at me.
It was at this point I realised that I was not about to be praised.
‘Please close the door, Mr Winnock,’ said Clem. He shot me one of his looks inviting me to guess what was about to happen.
‘This is Mrs Murdoch from Whinstanley and Cooper,’ he told me. He ignored Kelly Backworth.
‘To cut to the chase,’ he continued, ‘she’s not very happy with the way you conducted the case of Mrs West this morning.’
‘That I am not, Mr Wilson,’ she said, turning from Clem to me.
I felt my face drop. In fact I felt my whole being drop, my soul, my consciousness, the very essence of my existence, all hit the floor as I realised that not only was I about to be bollocked by the volcanic Mrs Murdoch, but that she had actually left her office and made her way across town to deliver the bollocking in person. This was unprecedented.
‘Mr Winnock,’ continued the volcanic Mrs Murdoch, ‘when I instruct someone to go to court and get an injunction, that is what I expect them to do.’
I was truly gobsmacked. Porky Phi left court with a house, a car and a big grin on her chops.
‘I don’t understand,’ I muttered.
‘It’s quite straightforward,’ said Clem, ‘you’ve got yourself confused, haven’t you?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘no, I haven’t.’
I looked at Kelly, hoping for some support, but she continued to look at her shoes. Mrs Murdoch wasn’t buying the confused line either. ‘My instructions couldn’t have been more simple,’ she growled, ‘this was a woman who needed the protection of the court, that is why we sought an injunction, and when we instruct Counsel we expect those instructions to be followed.’
‘But,’ I stammered, ‘Mrs West left court with a car and a house.’
‘Those were undertakings, Mr Winnock, they don’t count for anything. If Mr West changes his mind then they’re not worth the paper they’re written on.’
Mrs Murdoch had a point, but she hadn’t been there, she hadn’t seen the fear in the eyes of Mr West, she hadn’t seen the way he had capitulated so readily to his wife’s demands. Bloody hell, she hadn’t seen the perfect sausage-shaped burn mark on his chest. There was no way Mr West was going to change his mind, all he wanted was to get out of his marriage and as far away from his lunatic curling-tong-wielding wife as he could.
‘Have you spoken to Mrs West?’ I asked.
‘Her thoughts are irrelevant,’ Mrs Murdoch barked back at me, ‘but when her husband next has his hands around her throat, I’m sure she’ll want to know why her barrister didn’t bother to obtain an injunction to prevent that from happening.’
‘It won’t happen,’ I said. But I didn’t sound sure. I didn’t sound confident at all.
I knew that Ronnie Sherman would have told her where to go and remind her that he knew best, but I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t confident enough to say that. I wasn’t experienced enough. I didn’t have a red bag.
Instead I just shrugged and muttered an apology.
Clem tried his best to appease her. ‘Is there anything else that we can do to remedy this?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Mrs Murdoch forcefully, ‘you’ve done quite enough already.’ She turned to me. ‘Mr Winnock,’ she said, ‘I can assure you that you will never receive another brief from Whinstanley Cooper.’ And, with that, she got up and left, her nose in the air. Kelly followed her, but as she went she shot me a look, a slight movement of her head – did it denote sympathy? Or perhaps pity?
‘You muppet,’ said Clem.
‘Look, Clem,’ I said, ‘my client had branded her husband with a hair-curling device. Even if I had carried out my instructions, there’s not a Judge in the world that I could have persuaded that she was in need of any protection. And besides, she got the house and the car.’
‘Yes, and Whinstanley’s are denied the drawn out and lucrative divorce case that would have happened if you hadn’t sorted it out for them in half an hour this morning. They’ve lost out on thousands of pounds of legal fees because of you.’
The penny dropped.
He gave me a cold look. ‘You do realise, Mr Winnock, that when it comes to Whinstanley’s, you are now NIHWTLBOE.’
He spat out each of the letters.
‘NI what?’ I asked.
‘It stands for “Not If He Was The Last Barrister On Earth”. Every firm of solicitors has its NIHWTLBOE list.’ He now pronounced it newt-ill-bow. ‘You lost them money, you won’t work for them again, and you’ve just got to hope that Mrs Murdoch doesn’t tell her friends about this the next time the Law Society has one of its shindigs.’
I started to mumble a tentative defence – I started to tell him how my instinct told me that I was doing the right thing – but he had already lost interest, he had already turned away from me and was looking at a computer screen. He completely ignored my protestations of innocence.
‘You’d better check in later to see what you’re doing tomorrow, Mr Winnock. At the moment you’re free.’
I nodded. I had always thought that these were the most damning words that a junior barrister could possibly hear: ‘You are free tomorrow.’ They meant that tomorrow no one wants to employ you, no one wants you to represent them, you will be out of court, unemployed, earning absolutely zilch.
I now knew that these were not the most damning words a barrister could hear, I now knew that the most damning words were, ‘Not If He Was The Last Barrister On Earth.’
Instinct and the case of Harvey Mannerley (#ulink_ca139dcc-945f-59e7-b73b-c951edc86037)
Back in my room at chambers, my three roommates Amir, Jenny and Angus were crouched over Amir’s desk looking at some photographs of a pavement.
As I walked in, Amir shouted across at me, ‘What do you think, Russ,’ he said, ‘we’re having a debate as to whether this paving stone is a hazard or not. Angus thinks that it is, Jenny thinks that it isn’t.’
‘Course it bloody isn’t,’ interjected Jenny, ‘only if you were completely pissed and wearing high heels, and then it’s your own fault, frankly.’
‘Was the complainant wearing high-heeled shoes and pissed?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Amir, ‘he was a pensioner.’
‘Well they’re always falling over,’ said Jenny.
‘They need to be protected,’ said Angus, ‘the duty of care is totally with the council on this.’
‘What do you think, Ammie?’ I asked.
He looked back at the pavement – ‘My instinct says that this will settle,’ he told me.
And there it is, that word: instinct. It’s absolutely fundamental to our line of work. The ability to sniff the air and guess correctly what’s being blown towards you; the ability, learned from experience, to accurately predict what will happen in a given case.
Instinct is vital because, as barristers, we are often in a state of ignorance. Think about it: I am not allowed to converse with a jury, I have to guess what they will make of evidence, what they will understand and what they will not. Similarly, I have to second-guess the position of a Judge. I have to instinctively know what will annoy him or her, and what will soothe. And finally, I occasionally have to reach into the mind of a criminal or a client, work out what they are thinking and what advice will be best for them in their particular circumstances.
I’m not saying that I always get it right, what I am saying is that instinct is important and it’s not something that can be taught in a book or in a lecture theatre, it is something that is acquired over years of practice, it is something that is honed by getting things wrong, by irritating Judges, by watching others.
It is one of the reasons why barristers get so cross when successive governments have tried to undermine our profession by reducing our rates of pay and allowing others who are not as qualified, not as experienced, who don’t possess the instinct, to do our job.
In the case of Porky Pie West my instinct told me that she would not get the injunction she wanted, my instinct also told me that the deal that was being offered was a good one, and that she should take it.
Okay, it was a quick decision. It could turn out to be the wrong decision. As Mrs Murdoch said, I’ll only know if Mr West comes back and throttles his wife. But, somehow, I don’t think that that will happen – somehow, my instinct tells me that out of Porky and her branded husband, the most likely person to see the inside of a courtroom again will be her.
As my colleagues discuss pavements, my mind goes back to the case of Harvey Mannerley.
It was one of my first cases, and it showed me just how important instinct was going to be in my career as a barrister.
Harvey Mannerley was a rather pathetic individual in his mid-twenties. He was accused of harassing an eighteen-year-old girl he had met whilst they were both working in a supermarket warehouse. The girl was called India Williams. She was about to go off to university and found herself, as part of a summer job, working alongside Harvey – well, I say alongside, the reality is that India didn’t really take much notice of Harvey.
Where she was young and beautiful with a radiant, gleamingly effervescent smile that was just about to be unleashed onto the world in a million exciting ways, Harvey was a sad man with pallid grey skin and black hair that sat on his head as a greasy afterthought. He was thin and gaunt and had the look of someone who spent hours in his own bedroom, wanking.
He convinced himself that India was smiling for him and he embarked upon a campaign of letter writing. He would send her long, sinister anonymous letters in which he would tell her in fairly unsubtle detail what he wanted to do to her. In short, he was a stalker.
The evidence was overwhelming – his fingerprints were found on some of the envelopes and a handwriting expert had stated that there was extremely strong evidence to suggest that the handwriting on the letters belonged to Harvey Mannerley.
The case took place in small town Magistrates Court. I was young, barely 24, fresh out of Bar School – with very little experience and very little instinct. I was told that I wouldn’t have a solicitor with me – you rarely do in the Magistrates Court – and my instructions simply invited me to do my best in the face of very strong evidence.
I met Harvey in the reception area and took him down to a small, airless, windowless conference room in the basement. He wouldn’t look me in the eye; something that now, with a few years under my belt, I know is a bad sign. Back then, I knew nothing.
I sat him down and after introducing myself decided to tell him how grave the evidence was. ‘I’ve got be honest with you, Mr Mannerley,’ I said, ‘I think you’ve got a few problems today.’
At this he looked up at me, seething. ‘I’m not going guilty,’ he spat, ‘there’s no way I’m going guilty.’
‘No one’s trying to make you plead to anything,’ I said.
I paused. The pause was a mistake, a sign of my weakness, my inexperience and lack of confidence, a sign that I wasn’t in control. I now continued in a rather stuttering way. ‘I respect and appreciate that, that’s fine, but, Mr Mannerley—’
Before I could say anything more, he interjected again, ‘I ain’t pleading guilty. No way. I ain’t done nothing.’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘then can you tell me why your fingerprints are on those envelopes?’
He shrugged. ‘Whoever was sending them must have got them from the supermarket where I was working – I used to handle hundreds of envelopes – it doesn’t prove anything.’
I sucked my lips in and nodded as enthusiastically as I could.
‘Okay, that’s fine.’ I paused again. It allowed Mannerley to look at me and work out that I wasn’t quite as experienced as I was trying to make out.
‘How long have you been doing this for?’ he asked.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said.
‘It bloody does to me,’ said Mannerley, ‘you fucking come in here, telling me to plead guilty.’
‘Look, Mr Mannerley, I haven’t told you to plead anything. I’m simply pointing out that the evidence is strong.’
‘No it’s not, it’s shit, they can’t prove anything. No one has seen me do anything.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘not only are there the fingerprints, but there’s also a handwriting expert who says that your handwriting is the same as that in the letters.’
‘That’s just his opinion.’
‘Well, he is an expert. He spends his life having opinions about people’s handwriting. And,’ I continued, ‘the girl herself is convinced it’s you – because of some of the things that you’d said to her.’
He snorted contemptuously at this, then put his hands over his ears and shouted at me – ‘I am not fucking pleading guilty. Do. You. Understand?’
At this point, I was actually quite nervous. I realised that I was sitting in a room with a man who may have been capable of anything. I decided that the best thing to do was to simply go into court. ‘Come on then, Mr Mannerley,’ I said and we made our way into the courtroom where I would mount the defence of ‘it wasn’t me, Guv,’ despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The Magistrates sat looking at us: the usual three upstanding pillars of the community who are plucked from their day jobs to pass judgement over petty criminals, speeding motorists and those who pose a nuisance to their communities. In this case, the Chairman of the Bench was a tall angular man called The Doctor, because, well, he was a doctor. To the right of him was a man who looked a bit like a frog, and to his left was a woman who looked like she should have been at the Conservative Party Conference lamenting the passing of Margaret Thatcher.
Harvey Mannerley sat on a chair behind a desk to my left. Further along sat the prosecutor. The prosecutor was a Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) advocate by the name of Joe Hunter. I’d only ever been against him once before when he spent most of the time telling the Clerk of the Court how much he was looking forward to his retirement. He was grey and bored and clearly under-prepared. He stuttered as he told the Magistrates what the case was all about – then he called his first witness: Miss India Williams.
India made her way, nervously, into the courtroom and towards the witness box. She was attractive, dignified and harmless – everything that Harvey Mannerley was not. I looked over to my client and saw that he was staring intently at her; he seemed to rise slightly in his chair, as though trying to get a better look. It was creepy.
The prosecutor, Hunter, started to question the witness, inviting her to tell the court her version of events. At first everything was normal. She told of how she was working at Shopsmart Warehouse as a stock clerk and receptionist in the summer before she was due to go to university (the bench love the reference to university, they always do – in their eyes, it instantly makes her a more compelling and credible witness). She told them that Mannerley had also worked there and that she had been friendly to him, but not in a special way.
Then things got a bit weird. Hunter, inexplicably, handed her the letters and asked her to read them out. Miss Williams, clearly uncomfortable, dutifully started to read out the first letter. The contents were extreme, a childish attempt to describe pornographic desires. It was filth. Pages and pages of what he wanted to do to her in the toilets and in the staff room and round the back of the frozen food section. I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat as this young girl was made to read out the words of this horrible, delusional pervert.
And I knew they were Mannerley’s words. I just knew it. I know I’ve already said that we don’t ponder for too long about our clients’ guilt or innocence, and I know I’ve said that it is no business of ours if the court convicts or acquits – but, in this case, it was overwhelmingly clear that the words being so innocently read out by this girl had been written by my client.
Even worse, though, was the reaction of Harvey Mannerley. I looked over to him – he was entranced – this was his fantasy brought to life. The trial was no longer a test of his innocence or guilt, but had become an extension of his crime.
I looked over to Joe Hunter, who was stood, disinterested, probably counting the days until he was on his boat or in his French retirement home; I looked at the bench, at the Doctor and the Frog and the Thatcher woman, who were just sitting there impassive.
Then I looked back at Harvey Mannerley – who was now rubbing his thighs in barely contained excitement.
This had to stop. My instinct told me that I had to do something. Even though Mannerley was my client, there was no way I could allow this to go on so I stood up.
‘Sir,’ I said, addressing the Doctor. I wasn’t sure what to say next – you are not taught in Bar School what to do when your client is actually getting off on his own words being read out by his victim.
‘Yes, Mr Winnock?’
‘Er, can I have a brief adjournment please?’ Mannerley shot me the type of look that a toddler might give to his parent when being pulled out of a toyshop. ‘I need to take some instructions from my client.’
The Doctor conferred with his colleagues and nodded at me.
I turned to Mannerley. ‘Come on,’ I said to him – and we went back to the small, airless conference room we were in before.
‘Sit down,’ I said. I had no idea how I should deal with this, so I decided to lie. ‘This is terrible,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ I told him, ‘this girl is giving evidence in a way that means that this Magistrates Court are going to send you to prison for four years.’
‘What?’
‘Four years,’ I repeated, slowly, even though I knew full well that the maximum sentence that they could impose for this offence in this court was six months.
‘Imagine that. Four years in prison, four years of no TV, no computer, no nothing. You, and all manner of psychos and perverts. Do you want that, Mr Mannerley? Because that is what is going to happen if you continue with this.’
At this point Mannerley got up to his feet and started to slowly circle the room, his head in his hands. He was mumbling something – and he was becoming increasingly loud and more and more agitated. I could hear him behind me. I braced myself, expecting him to hit me.
Thud.
I flinched. But he hadn’t hit me, I turned around to see Mannerley standing in the corner, banging his head against the wall – ‘You all think I’m guilty, you all think I’m guilty.’
‘I don’t,’ I said, which was another lie, ‘I just don’t want you to spend more time in prison than you have to.’
He turned to me, seething. His fists clenched. His teeth gritted in vicious hatred of me, and, just as likely, of himself. I stood there, looking him in the eye, bracing myself for the violence that I was sure was about to follow.
Instead, though, he turned away from me and ran out of the conference room and out of the court building.
My heart pounding, I went back into court.
‘I am sorry,’ I said to the bench, ‘I’m afraid that Mr Mannerley has just run away.’
The Doctor looked at me – ‘Mr Winnock,’ he said witheringly, ‘we realise that it’s not your fault that Mr Mannerley has decided to abscond, but we do question whether it was right for you to ask for a break whilst Miss Williams was in the middle of her evidence.’
I nodded and apologised, because that is what you are supposed to do, but I wasn’t sorry that I’d brought the ordeal to an end. Not for one second. The Doctor then granted what’s known as a bench warrant for the arrest of Harvey Mannerley, which would mean that the police could arrest him as soon as he was discovered.
As I left court I spotted India Williams standing with her, clearly, very nice parents – they were talking in hushed tones. I went to walk past them, then stopped and turned around.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m not supposed to say this, but if they ever arrest Harvey Mannerley, and if there is another trial, for god’s sake, tell the prosecutor that you won’t read out any of those letters. You don’t need to. The prosecutor can either hand them up, or read them himself without you being in the room.’
I smiled politely and left.
For the record, Harvey Mannerley was arrested four months later. Thankfully I didn’t have to represent him again. As it happened, on that occasion, he pleaded guilty and was made subject to a Community Order.
Did I do the right thing? My instinct tells me that I did, but you’ll make up your own minds.
The ten greatest trials of all time (#ulink_32b493b0-cf9a-52c6-8bc2-95f3c8be91b4)
If there’s one thing that certain types of men like nothing more than doing – it’s compiling lists. Me and my university mates would do it all the time – ten greatest FA Cup goals, ten greatest Rock and Roll deaths, ten best albums of all time; you know the type of thing – and, yes, some of the lists that we would compile were law based. I thought I’d share a few of them with you over the course of this book. First up, in no particular order, is The Ten Greatest Trials of All Time.
1 1. The Trial of Oscar Wilde (1895) – this had it all: sex, celebrity, wit and scandal – all in front of a packed Old Bailey as Wilde defended his honour by bringing a charge of criminal libel against the father of his young lover, the Earl of Queensberry. Not surprisingly, given that Queensberry could call a room full of men who had had ‘sexual encounters’ with Wilde, even Thomas Clarke, the leading Silk representing him, was unable to bring home the case. The cross-examination of Wilde by Queensberry’s Silk, the future Irish politician Edward Carson, is legendary.
2 2. Donoghue v Stevenson (1932) – you might not have heard of this case, but you will certainly have felt its implications. This case established the international concept of negligence, and introduced the legal principle that in some circumstances we owe others a duty of care. Mrs Donoghue bought a bottle of ginger beer, drank it, fell ill, then discovered that there was a dead snail inside the bottle. She sued the drinks manufacturer, one Stevenson, and eventually won on appeal to the House of Lords, with the court declaring by a majority that the drinks manufacturer owed a ‘duty of care’ to the ultimate consumer – a judgement that has kept hundreds of lawyers in work ever since.
3 3. The Trial of OJ Simpson (1995) – another one involving celebs and sex. Former American football star and film actor OJ Simpson was accused of shooting dead his wife and her lover. The evidence appeared overwhelming, but ace attorney Johnnie Cochrane managed to convince the jury after a year and a half long trial that there was reasonable doubt.
4 4. The Trial of Jeremy Thorpe (1978) – back to the Old Bailey, and the trial that made the name and reputation of George Carman QC. Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party at the time, stood accused of conspiring to murder his ‘gay lover’, Norman Scott, after Scott’s dog was shot in rather suspicious circumstances. Carman (with a bit of help from the trial Judge) managed to persuade the jury that there was nothing in it.
5 5. Roe v Wade (1973) – a landmark American Supreme Court trial that established that a woman has the right to control over her own body, including the right to abort a foetus. Even four decades later, this one still causes ructions amongst the American people as the right-wing and liberal politicians continue to argue about its merits.
6 6. Brown v The Board of Education (1954) – staying with the American Supreme Court, this time a landmark civil rights ruling that it was unconstitutional for children to be segregated according to their racial background after the parents of black schoolchildren in Topeka, Kansas, challenged the racist policy that allowed discrimination amongst schoolchildren. (And quite bloody right too!)
7 7. The Trial of Thomas More (1535) – there are quite a few grisly trials to choose from around the time of the Reformation, but my personal favourite is the trial of Sir Thomas More. More, former Lord Chancellor and a formidable scholar and philosopher, was accused and tried for High Treason. During the trial he was cross-examined by no less than six of the country’s most esteemed legal and constitutional minds as they tried to get him to vow allegiance to the King – he didn’t budge, and despite more than holding his own against the onslaught of questions, they convicted him and chopped off his head.
8 8. The Trial of Oscar Pistorius (2014) – Pistorius, the double amputee superstar of South African sport, shot his beautiful model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in the middle of the night on Valentine’s Day 2013. Oscar’s defence was that he ‘Thought she was an intruder.’ Perhaps surprisingly, you might think, the Judge agreed and he was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of ‘culpable homicide’. So according to the Judge it was all just a horrible accident.
9 9. The Nuremberg Trials (1946) – described as ‘the greatest trial in history’, 21 senior Nazis in the dock, charged with various war crimes committed during the Second World War, ranging from the execution of prisoners of war to genocide. Hartley Shawcross and Robert Jackson prosecuting, and an indictment as long as an airport paperback. One year and one month later, twelve were sentenced to death, three were acquitted and the rest – the ones who hadn’t committed suicide, that is – were given various prison sentences.
10 10. The Trial of Jesus Christ (approx. 33AD) – a bit lacking in the niceties of courtroom procedure, but a significant trial nonetheless. According to the New Testament, Christ is charged with blasphemy by the Sanhedrin (an assembly consisting of at least 23 of the cleverest men who would determine the application of Jewish law) in Jerusalem. To this charge, he doesn’t appear to mount much of a defence. Indeed, by asserting that he was ‘the Son of God’, he probably made things a bit worse. After being convicted, as we all know too well, Jesus was taken to Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor, who upheld the demands for crucifixion. I sometimes wonder how things would have panned out if the trial had taken place in one of our Magistrates Courts, with Jesus being represented by the duty solicitor – ‘Your Worships, my client, Mr Christ, intends to plead not guilty to the charge. His defence? Er, he’ll be running the “I am the rightful Messiah Son of God” defence. What do you mean that’s not a defence in law?’
Dinners, beers and ‘what would you do if you weren’t a barrister?’ (#ulink_c561abbf-b8c5-5c57-bdff-77ebcba3c12a)
Most Friday nights after court I meet up with Ed and Johnny, two old university mates, at the Erskine Pub near chambers. After a few pints and the stress of the week waned, we reminisce about our happy student days. We all studied law at Leeds – oh how wonderful it was to be a student: Thursday nights at the Students’ Union Bar dancing to Oasis and Blur and trying to tap off with girls, failing, then watching the fights break out at the kebab shop and trying desperately hard not to look like a student, because the students usually got their heads kicked in. Days missing lectures, and trying to understand contract law and dreaming about our futures as brilliant barristers.
Most of the students on our course wanted to be solicitors, so we were drawn together as aspiring barristers. In our final year we came down to our Inn in London together to do our dinners. Dinners, or dining and the Inns, are another little secret of the strange world of the Bar. It works like this: once you have completed your law degree and decided you want to become a barrister, you have to join an Inn. There are four Inns: Middle Temple, Inner Temple, Gray’s Inn and Lincoln’s Inn.
Once you have joined your Inn you have to do ‘dining’. That is, you have to go to your Inn and have a meal in the company of other barristers and student barristers. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you are, it doesn’t matter if you are Plutarch, Petrocelli or Perry bleeding Mason, if you haven’t done the dinners, you won’t get called to the Bar and you won’t be able to practise as a barrister. And it’s not just one dinner, oh no, there are twelve dinners. So there you have it, a pre-requisite to becoming a barrister is eating food.
Ed, Johnny and I decided to join Gray’s Inn. I can’t remember why now, I think the dinners were probably the cheapest. Once we had joined the Inn, every couple of weeks we put on our best clobber and went down to London. I have to say that at first it was exciting to go down to the Great Hall of Gray’s Inn. You got to wear a robe and, occasionally, sit next to a proper Queen’s Counsel or High Court Judge, who were, on the whole, quite kind and encouraging. One even offered me snuff (which caused a bit of confusion as I thought he was offering me marijuana, which probably isn’t a mistake I’d make now).
The three of us were state-school boys; my parents were old-fashioned socialists. I wasn’t used to this kind of pomp and ceremony, so wearing your best suit, listening to Latin prayers, drinking too much wine and port and then going on for a few beers at a London club with girls called Prunella, Jemima and Beatrice was new and fun.
But, some time around dinner number six, things started to become a bit tiresome. There are only so many times you can listen to some crusty old Silk tell you how difficult it is for young barristers; or even worse, some chinless, limp-coiffed, posh boy called Giles tell you he has got six different offers of pupilage and he’s not quite sure which one to take, when you’ve been turned down by every set you’ve applied to.
Still, it was a rite of passage and afterwards the three of us moved to London together and shared a flat in Catford. It was great. We were all in different chambers with different people but we came back each night and sat around drinking, eating takeaway curries and talking about our days, our cases and our clients. We felt we’d done well. We’d worked hard, we’d passed our exams and we felt we’d achieved. Getting to the Bar. Becoming a professional. Mixing with the privileged and the clever and those who were clearly destined for great things. It felt like we had a covenant with the state and society. We’d done the work and now we hoped that we’d be rewarded for our efforts.
For the three of us, it was all so easy, so straightforward; our dreams were being fulfilled, our expectations achieved, we would become the barristers that we had aspired to be.
After a couple of years Johnny moved out to live with Fiona, so we replaced him with this weird guy called Vikram, which didn’t really work, as he was a nurse who kept some odd hours. And then Ed met Joanne and he moved out, then Vikram moved out – and me, well, I moved into my own flat.
On my own.
Which, actually, I don’t mind at all.
I think.
Anyway, Johnny is at the Criminal Bar in a set similar to mine, and Ed works at a specialist Chancery set.
As I’ve already alluded to, the Chancery Bar is very different from the Criminal Bar. It is full of particularly clever, academic types who rarely talk to one another and make a load of money. They all seem to be called Rupert or Henry. I’m not sure that Ed fits in. He tells us he works for oil companies and multinationals, but I’m never really quite sure what he actually does. Unlike criminal barristers or family barristers, he doesn’t tell you about his cases, in fact the only time he did, we had to tell him to stop because it was just too boring.
Johnny, on the other hand, doesn’t stop telling you about his cases. He has a natural and infectious enthusiasm – if he were a dog he would have a constantly wagging tail.
On this particular Friday night, they were already there when I arrived, standing by the bar.
They greeted me with the universal hand gesture for ‘what do you want to drink?’ and I replied that I’d have a glass of stout.
‘Well, gents,’ said Johnny, pausing only to take a large glug of beer from his glass, ‘I’ve got some news.’
I assumed that he was going to announce that he and Fiona were having a baby. They’d been married for a year (or is it two?) so it seemed kind of logical that they were going to start a family. But I was completely wrong.
Johnny took a deep breath. ‘I’m leaving the Bar,’ he said.
We both looked at him.
‘What?’ said Ed.
‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘I’ve had my fill. I owe a ton of money, I’m being paid bugger all for working every hour, there’s no chance of career advancement – so I’ve decided: I’m getting out while I’m still young enough.’
At this point a rather strange concoction of emotions filled my mind – first, there was an evil streak of pleasure, Johnny leaving meant one less criminal barrister to compete with; then there was jealousy, at his luck at having something else to go to; then there was respect that he had the balls to get up and do something else; finally, there was sadness, the old team was being broken up.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Ed.
Johnny took another big intake of breath. ‘I’ve got a job as a croupier in a hotel in Dubai.’
We both exclaimed, ‘What?!’
‘Yes. I start next month. The salary is ace. More money per month than I can earn prosecuting burglars and bottom pinchers, I can tell you.’
Now my main emotion was jealousy – a croupier in a hotel, for a ruck of money, it’s genius, why didn’t I think of it?
‘What does Fiona think?’ I asked.
‘She’s mad for it. She’s got a job in the same hotel.’
Ed shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it, you must be bonkers.’
‘Look,’ argued Johnny forcefully, ‘what’s the point; we’re both lower-middle-class kids who went to university because we were told it was for the best. We got good jobs, in good professions, because we were told that was what we had to do, and we got riddled with debt for the privilege. Now, we can’t afford a mortgage, can’t afford a pension, can’t afford to start a family. It’s a joke.’
Johnny had clearly rehearsed this argument before. I imagined him putting it to his parents and in-laws. Leaving the Bar will have made no sense to them, but it made perfect sense to me.
‘A croupier,’ said Ed with unconcealed contempt, ‘come on, you’re having a laugh.’
‘It’s okay for you, Ed,’ I said, ‘but Johnny’s right, for us it feels like we’re banging our heads against brick walls. We’ve not had a pay rise for years, in fact it just gets harder and harder to make a living.’
‘Yep,’ continued Johnny, ‘you boys at the Chancery Bar have got no idea, I was talking to Shanna earlier, you know, from my chambers?’
We both nod and Johnny continued, ‘She’s about five years call, and this week she went to the Magistrates Court for a firm of solicitors to do a trial in the Youth Court, and do you know how much they paid her? Her bus fare, that’s what. They knew she’d do it because she wanted to impress them, in the hope of getting more work. I tell you, fellas, it’s a joke, and I’ve had enough.’
Ed looked at us both, his lips thinned. He knew there was something in what we were saying, and what Johnny was doing.
After a while he turned to me. ‘What are you going to do then, Russ? You’re not thinking of leaving, are you?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll get a job as an exotic dancer in John’s hotel.’
‘Seriously,’ said Ed, ‘what would you do if you weren’t a barrister? What would you do if you could do something else?’
And that was the thing. I didn’t really want to do anything else. Okay, I am pissed off about the fact that our work was being farmed out to others, and that our pay was being cut, and that we were seen, wrongly, as immoral money-grabbing bastards who would sell our grandmothers for a brief, an acquittal and a bag of cash. I am pissed off with all of this, but – and call me a soft-centred lily-livered old whoopsie if you want – I still see it as a privilege to get up in court and represent people in their time of need. I want to be a barrister, just as I had when I’d sat down with my parents and watched, enthralled, some TV drama where a wonderfully erudite and maverick QC was winning the case against all the odds. That was still what I aspired to be.
‘Come on then,’ said Ed, repeating his question as if he was cross-examining a witness. ‘If you could do something else, what would you do?’
I took in some breath, chewed my bottom lip a bit, shrugged mournfully, then answered, ‘I dunno, maybe write, I’m not sure.’
‘Well,’ said Johnny, thankfully ignoring my suggestion of an alternative career, ‘I’m sure I can put a good word in for you at the hotel.’
I thanked Johnny for his offer of assistance, and suggested that it was my round.
Then I saw her.
Kelly Backworth.
The unsmiling, unfriendly Judas who had failed to defend me in any way to her boss when the issue of my conduct in the Porky Phi case was being discussed and had sat there, with a face as unfeeling as a wardrobe, as Mrs Murdoch and my clerk had declared me a barrister persona non grata – NIHWTLBOE.
I looked over at her. She was with a friend. And she was smiling. Oh yes, she was smiling now, great big, happy, unicorn-frolicking rainbow smiles. That was what she was doing now, away from court, away from me.
And what a smile it was – lovely glistening teeth, sparkling behind full lips that were now freed from the shackles of the Family Court and glossed by a shimmering lipstick.
I felt something shout at me from within my consciousness.
Then I walked over to the other side of the bar to where she and her friend were sitting. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. As I approached, she spotted me and, in an instant, the rainbow smile disappeared behind a cloud, the unicorns went back into their shed and the slate-grey misery that she had shown in court returned.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Hi,’ she repeated, then turned to her friend (who was smiling at me with a weird interest), ‘this is Russell Winnock,’ said Kelly, ‘he’s a barrister from Gray’s Buildings.’ I smiled at the friend, and shook her hand. ‘I’m Beverley,’ she said.
‘So,’ I said, and turned to the miserably beautiful Kelly Backworth. ‘Kelly, what happened? I thought we’d done a good job for Mrs West. Then, whoosh, I’m getting both barrels from your boss.’
Kelly looked down for a second. ‘Yes,’ she said, quietly, ‘I’m sorry about that – she can be a bit of a cow.’
‘A bit of a cow,’ I exclaimed, ‘that’s an understatement. I don’t know who would come off worse in a fight, your Mrs Murdoch or Phi, the psychopath we were representing.’
A small, barely noticeable smile flickered across Kelly’s mouth. Not rainbows, not frolicking mythical beasts, not teeth – but the hint of a smile nonetheless.
‘Seriously though,’ I continued, ‘Mrs West got a great deal, there’s every chance that if we hadn’t settled things, she’d have left court with nothing at all.’
‘But you were instructed to get an injunction,’ she said to me, her voice strong, yet friendly. And at this point, I confess, I really, really fancied Kelly Backworth.
‘We wouldn’t have got one though,’ I said. ‘You should have seen the burn mark Porky Phi had branded into Mr West’s chest.’
‘That’s the thing, Mr Winnock,’ said Kelly, ‘I didn’t see it. If you’d have shown me, I would have been able to defend you to Mrs Murdoch.’
She was right. Bloody hell. Kelly was completely right. In my enthusiasm, in my desire to sort out the case, I’d forgotten to include my instructing solicitors in the process. And that, more than anything, was why I’d been given such a roasting. I understood it now. I got it. You see it’s not all about the barrister, it’s not all about the person who stands up in court, the relationship with a solicitor is just as important, and I had neglected it.
I looked at Kelly.
‘Please,’ I mumbled, ‘call me Russ. Mr Winnock makes me sound like the maths teacher everyone hated.’
She smiled again. This time it was a definite smile. There were teeth and everything.
I thought about offering to buy them both a drink, but before the thought could become an offer, Johnny was shouting at me from the other side of the bar, ‘Oi, Winnock, are you brewing those beers or what?’
I looked at Kelly. ‘I’d better go,’ I said, and she nodded.
‘And, yes,’ I added, ‘you’re right, sorry, I should have brought you with me to see Mr West’s chest.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘we had a phone call from Mrs West today, she thought you were the dog’s bollocks.’
Now my face broke into a deep grin. ‘Really?’
Kelly smiled again, ‘Yes.’
A couple of hours later, I staggered from the pub out into the cold air.
I looked up and contemplated the vastness for a few seconds, then made my way to the bus stop.
I felt sad at the fact that Johnny was leaving the Bar. I remembered us all going to lectures and stressing about assignments and trying to get jobs, and practising our speeches on each other for our mock trials and Bar Finals. I remembered how chuffed we were on the day we were called to the Bar, declared an ‘utter barrister’. Allowed to practise and call ourselves Learned, wear a wig and gown. It had all been so exciting. It had meant everything. And now Johnny had given it all up. And that somehow seemed a massive waste. I wouldn’t be giving up though – no way. I wouldn’t be giving up, because I knew I could do it, succeed, and what’s more, Mrs West knew it as well, which is why she’d said I was the dog’s bollocks.
The importance of pages (#ulink_a1a95e77-82a8-5c8d-8d1b-29c61892a868)
It is rare that a week goes by without me receiving some sort of brief involving drugs – usually involving someone selling them, or stealing people’s goods to pay for them. It strikes me that if Parliament made drugs lawful, crime would dry up and I would have to seriously think about an alternative career.
So when I picked up a new set of instructions from my pigeonhole, I wasn’t in the least bit surprised to discover a drugs case involving a man called Simon, who had the misfortune to be stopped by police with ten bags of crack cocaine hidden in his socks.
I looked at the brief and immediately noted from the index that there 49 pages of statements and 27 pages of exhibits – which means the interview, any relevant photographs or other documents. So, in total there were 76 pages of evidence – this is significant.
Why? I hear you ask. You might think that the number of pages is significant because it means that the evidence against my client is strong, or perhaps, conversely, you’re thinking that doesn’t sound like a lot of pages, or maybe you’re feeling sorry for me having to read all those pages.
Well, actually, its significance is far simpler – true the page count can reflect the strength of a case, but not always. In fact sometimes the most damning cases can be contained in a few meagre pages. Nor does the workload really bother us, we’ll read all the pages, come what may. No, the number of pages is significant because it is directly linked with how much money each case will be paid.
As I have mentioned, in the main, criminal barristers are self-employed and every barrister doing legal aid work will, at some point, wonder how much they are going to be paid for their endeavours – and the greater the number of pages, the higher the fee.
It works something like this: for the purpose of payment, each case is categorised according to what crime appears on the indictment. Murder, for example, is in the highest category as it is deemed to be the most serious offence, then comes rape, other sexual offences, complicated fraud and so on, all the way down to shoplifting and criminal damage where the cost of repair is under five thousand pounds. There is a flat fee for each of these offences, which is then increased according to the number of pages. For example a burglary with twelve pages of evidence is not going to be worth as much as a burglary with 120 pages of evidence, or a murder with 933 pages.
If the matter goes to trial, then the fee is increased with the payment of a further amount of money for each day of the trial – which are known as refreshers (apart from day two, which, bizarrely, we do for free!).
Now, don’t get me wrong, nearly all criminal barristers will take whatever case comes their way, and do their very best, but, because of the way we are paid, a lucrative case would be a rape trial lasting many weeks, with hundreds of pages of evidence, whilst a less financially attractive case would be a theft which goes to trial, lasting two days, with 26 pages of evidence; which is, alas, more common for most jobbing junior barristers.
There is also something called a cracked trial. This is when someone pleads guilty on the day of trial or shortly before, which is worth more than if the person pleads guilty at the earliest opportunity.
The practical implication of all this is that, very often, barristers who are doing the job honestly and professionally will find themselves advising against their own financial self-interest.
Take the following couple of examples.
I was instructed to defend a Polish chap whose family had been involved in a feud with another Polish family. There were over 700 pages on the brief and the trial was listed to last for five weeks – it would have been worth a few bob to say the least.
On the morning of the first day, my client, whose name was Jan Koszlak – a very nice man as it happens, if you put to one side his penchant for attacking people who crossed him with a Samurai sword – came to me and asked if he should plead guilty to the charge. As he said it my heart groaned, or rather, my bank balance groaned. I knew that a plea on day one of the trial would cost me a few thousand quid. I also knew that it was a trial that we could win, but that would by no means be guaranteed.
If I was thinking in a selfish way, I would have said, no, you should definitely run a trial. But I couldn’t do that, it wouldn’t have been right. So instead I said to Jan, ‘Well, if you plead now, you’ll get a little bit of credit, not much, but it will still be a lesser sentence than if you run a trial and lose. It is,’ I said, ‘up to you.’
Jan weighed this up, looked at me carefully, and asked, ‘What would you do?’ A question many defendants ask, and all barristers hate.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, which is the honest response. ‘It would be easy for me to say run the trial, but I’m not the one facing the porridge.’
‘Will I win?’ he asked.
I shrugged. ‘I have no idea. As soon as a case goes before a jury, it will have a life of its own.’
‘What are the odds?’ he asked (another question which all barristers hate), and I answered the way I always do, which is the only safe way to answer: ‘About 50-50.’
He nodded to himself, and then said slowly, ‘Okay, I’ll plead guilty. I can’t take the risk of longer time in jail.’
I smiled and told him he was probably doing the wisest thing, but inside I was screaming, ‘You’ve just cost me thousands of bloody pounds!’
Another time, I was sent to represent a man who was accused of grooming teenage girls for the purposes of sex. My client, Ron, was a 42-year-old welder living with his mother, who had been posing on Facebook, and various other social media websites, as Kyle, a sixteen-year-old school boy with Boy Band hair and a detailed understanding of teenager-speak (WTF, OMG, LMFAO etc., you know the stuff).
Kyle was rumbled when he made the mistake of trying to chat up Cindy, who wasn’t, as she claimed, a fourteen-year-old, slightly experienced little minx, with a keen interest in One Direction, push-up bras and lads with tattoos, but actually Detective Constable Steve Parker, a 36-year-old father of two who played blind-side flanker for Redbridge RFC Second team and listened to Radio 2. DC Parker was part of Operation Cinderella, a ‘honey-trap’ police operation. For two weeks he had coquettishly responded to all of ‘Kyle’s’, or should I say Ron’s, questions about what underwear she was wearing and if she liked to ‘swallow’, before enough evidence was amassed to arrest and charge him.
It wasn’t actually my case; I had been asked to cover it for another member of chambers. The hearing was simply to fix a new date for a trial. I hadn’t read all the papers – just enough to give me a flavour of the charge, and see that there were hundreds of pages of exhibits to cover all the conversations that had gone on – it was, without doubt, a lucrative brief.
When I arrived, Ron was in tears. ‘I just want to plead guilty,’ he told me. ‘I can’t take any more.’
‘Okay,’ I said carefully, ‘do you accept what you are accused of doing?’
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