The Chairman's Blog

Chairman’s Farewell Blog
21st December 2007

Many people have asked whether I am demob happy as I come to the end of my year as Chairman of the Bar. Surprisingly, perhaps, I am not. I am, however, concerned to ensure that the Bar has been left in good shape to face the challenges of the coming months and years.

We have, I hope, made progress in many areas this year: access and the Neuberger report. This will be mainstream BC policy next year, and an implementation group chaired by Duncan Matthews QC has already been set up. On quality, we have established BQAP (the Bar Quality Advisory Panel), and it has started its work. On fees, the Carter rates have come in to force, and are being appreciated now by many practitioners.

The challenges ahead are, however, still daunting.
One case one fee (OCOF) and best value tendering (BVT) remains a real problem. We must respond in meticulous detail to the consultation paper on BVT for police station and Magistrates’ Court work, so that we are not left behind when the May 2008 consultation paper comes to ask the same questions about the Crown Court. It remains my strongly held view that BVT and OCOF are not suitable for Crown Court work, as they will reduce the quality of advocacy in important cases.

The implementation of the Legal Services Act 2007 also raises major challenges for the profession. We must decide what new structures the BC (through the BSB) should be prepared to regulate, and we must make sure that we do not lose ground to the Law Society and the SRA in that debate. The regulations under the Act will be crucial, and we must be influential in their drafting and direction.

The debate over use of Crown Advocates and defence HCAs continues to rage. I believe we have won the argument, and everyone now accepts that prosecution advocates must own their own cases, and must not undertake cases for which they are inadequately experienced or qualified. The question is only how to make sure that the aspiration of the CPS to do more work in-house can be tempered by the realities of these quality demands. The Bar is happy to compete, but quality cannot be compromised. Public confidence in the justice system will suffer, if the best advocate for the job is not instructed.

Again on parity of fees, I believe we are making progress. Disparity cannot continue for long, otherwise, again, the best people will simply stop prosecuting, thereby further damaging public confidence in our criminal process.

The new VHCC system will not work satisfactorily, and we must work overtime with the LSC next year to develop a system that can work effectively, and will attract the very best to undertake the most difficult and important cases. We are in the process of doing just that.

As for legal aid generally, we have established far better relations with the MoJ and the LSC. I am confident that these relationships will improve still further in the months ahead.

I wish Tim Dutton QC and Desmond Browne QC every success in tackling the problems I have outlined.

I have much enjoyed blogging on the BC website. To my amazement, I understand that the blog has been read more widely than one would expect. I wish all the readers of my blog an excellent holiday and an extremely successful New Year.

Geoffrey Vos QC

This has been a month of circuit visits. I have been already to Nottingham and Cambridge, and am going today to Sheffield, and tomorrow to Bristol. Over the last 2½ years, I must have made 30 or 40 circuit visits. I have enjoyed them all. Even at the height of the Carter process, when Stephen Hockman and I were not always given a smooth ride, I have always come away from the circuits better informed about what makes barristers tick, and what needs to be done to improve the justice system generally.

On Saturday 17th November, I spoke at the first Pro Bono Conference attended by some 350 delegates from across the legal profession. It was an inspiring occasion, because it epitomised the message that I have been trying to get across all year – namely that the ethos of our profession is public service, and that, in all but a tiny minority of cases, people come to the Bar and enter the legal profession, in order to improve the justice system, to make legal advice available to the less privileged and the most vulnerable in our society, and to provide a legal system of which we can be proud.

The question facing the Pro Bono Conference was how to mainstream pro bono work. I think the answer to this conundrum is threefold.

First, we must broaden our understanding of pro bono. Pro bono contributions include services to Society at all levels. Pro bono is not only about giving free legal advice to the most vulnerable. As was pointed out on Saturday, some really talented and able lawyers are simply not able to advise sensibly on housing benefits and other day to day issues. But that does not mean that pro bono is closed to them. They can advise and train lawyers in the third world in their areas of special expertise. They can contribute to their professional bodies so as to enable those who are able to deliver pro bono advice at the sharp end to do so more easily and with more resources at their disposal. They can become involved in legal charities and other service providers.

Secondly, we must make sure that those starting in the legal profession have a pro bono ethos from the outset. Law firms and Chambers alike must encourage their students, trainees and pupils to include a meaningful proportion of pro bono work with FRU, or in law Centres or in myriads of other ways, as a part of their daily working lives. Once they have got the bug, they will carry on doing it throughout their professional lives and beyond. As our workshop on Saturday put it, they will have the “Pro Bono bug for life”.

Thirdly, senior members of the profession must find imaginative ways to provide mechanisms by which lawyers can undertake pro bono work as part of their practises. We have come a long way since the establishment of the Bar Pro Bono Unit 10 years ago, but it is even more crucial now to support a civil justice system in which access to justice is more limited than it was when I came to the Bar. Civil Legal Aid is available in only a few practice areas, and we can do more to reach the vast number of citizens who will otherwise never receive the advice they need.

Geoffrey Vos QC
Chairman of the Bar Council

The last week could hardly have been more eventful. The Bar Conference on Saturday was attended by nearly 550 people. Its theme was “Human Rights – Taking Liberties”, and the day was extremely successful. The Conference viewed a specially recorded video message from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and then heard a keynote speech from the legendary Sir Sydney Kentridge QC. His speech was very well received. He expressed the view that Parliament should look critically at the evidence upon the basis of which it is suggested that the 28 day detention period should be extended to 56 days. Most of the audience seemed whole-heartedly to agree with that.

In the late afternoon, the motion “This House believes that the Human Rights Act should be repealed”, was heavily defeated by a plenary session with only 12 people voting in favour, despite, I should say, spirited support for the motion from Dominic Grieve MP and Melanie Phillips.

I created something of a stir on the Today programme by arguing (as I did in my conference speech) that publicly funded and pro bono barristers are as much deserving of public respect, as doctors, nurses and teachers. John Humphries was sceptical. But the truth is that the people of this country are as much need an effective justice system, in which they can have confidence, as they are in need of a proper Health Service. It is the publicly funded and pro bono lawyers that protect the most vulnerable members of Society. They follow the Bar’s ethos of public service, in which I might say, I passionately believe. I think it is high time that our public service was better recognised by the Government and the public alike. It is not true that the public hate lawyers. Almost everyone who has had a lawyer acting for him will say that that lawyer did a great job at a reasonable price – or on modest public funding.

It is simply not true that lawyers are fat cats. There are probably no more very high earning barristers than there are very high earning professionals in other professions. The highly paid lawyers that there are, are paid privately in a free market – and what is more, they are generally driving the large exports of legal services (about £2 billion per annum now), and making London the capital of the Legal world, and keeping English law in pole position internationally. Virtually all of them undertake significant pro bono service in numerous different areas.

One of the high spots of the Conference was the Young Bar Forum at which Michelle Harris and two other excellent speakers gave inspiring speeches about the pro bono contributions they had made to Human Rights in Palestine, India and other countries. I found the session truly inspiring.

One leading barrister said that the conference made him proud to be a barrister. Why was that? Because for once, we are getting across our message that lawyers act in the public interest, and are doing more than I can say to build a just Society in which the vulnerable are protected, and in which Human Rights and the Rule of Law are paramount.

Geoffrey Vos QC
Chairman of the Bar