The Inner Temple Yearbook 2021–2022
Post-Lockdown Review: the Junior Junior Bar on the Frontline
POST-LOCKDOWN REVIEW:
THE JUNIOR JUNIOR BAR ON THE FRONTLINE By Lily Walker-Parr, 5RB, and Oliver May, No 5 Barristers Chambers
The last year has been an incredibly challenging time for the Bar as a whole, but it is difficult to imagine a more challenging time to practise at the most junior end. Junior barristers (and in particular those funded by legal aid work) play an essential role in our legal system. ‘Junior juniors’ tend to deal with urgent matters, meet lay clients on a near daily basis, and travel significant distances on public transport. All of this is rewarded by an income highly dependent on a healthy diet of often-low-paying work.
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As the pandemic took hold in March 2020, a picture quickly emerged of widespread financial uncertainty for barristers owing to fears about chambers’ stability and allocation of work. The cohort ineligible for the government’s selfemployed scheme, which included the very newest practitioners, felt these fears most acutely. This was coupled with health and safety concerns of those compelled to attend court in person – whether due to the nature of the hearing, a court estate unprepared for widespread remote hearings, financial concerns or, for many pupils, fear (unfounded or not) of jeopardising tenancy decisions. Most significant was the effect of the pandemic on mental health. Forty-five per cent of pupils reported that the pandemic presented a significant challenge to their wellbeing, and one can only assume that this is reflected across the Bar as a whole. The support and collegiality enjoyed by our small but sociable profession, formerly the most robust mitigant of well being concerns, was significantly undermined when it was forced behind a veneer of Zoom and Microsoft Teams. (We can all agree that lunch with a colleague or a pint after a hard day in court just cannot be replicated online.) As life begins its slow ascent to normality (or, at least, the ‘new normal’), it is important to reflect upon how the profession supported its most vulnerable members. A recent survey shines a positive light on chambers’ efforts to provide the best training and supervision possible in the circumstances, and this deserves to be recognised as no mean feat. The Young Bar Committee of the Bar Council championed – and continues to champion – the issues affecting the junior Bar. The financial lifeline offered by the Inns and other organisations such as the Barristers’ Benevolent Association is also to be applauded. However, there is still work to do: many junior practitioners are still recovering financially; new tenants are only just meeting colleagues and belatedly settling into life in chambers; and all are trying to develop their embryonic practices, which, to date, have felt the impact of months of missed networking and in-person court opportunities. We have asked junior practitioners what barriers they faced, what they did to overcome them, and who or what helped them along the way. It is important that we learn from these experiences – the good, bad and ugly – so that we may grow as a profession, and perhaps so that we are better prepared should this ever happen again. These are their stories.
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TIERNAN FITZGIBBON, FIVE PAPER
Call – 2018 Practice Area – Civil Circuit – South-East We all have a list of what the worst things about lockdown were. The interminable walks. The Great Flour Shortage of 2020. Trying to figure out whether bumping elbows, kicking feet or waving manically was the best way of greeting people. For some, that list also includes remote hearings. I appreciate there are concerns regarding the gravitas of the judicial process being lost, technological unfairness to litigants in person and the myriad other concerns that have been raised. That is not to say, however, that there are not benefits too and, as a junior barrister, I could not be more in favour of remote hearings for precisely one reason: 2 minutes and 40 seconds. That is my current shortest hearing in lockdown. In normal times, that would have involved more than five hours of travel and my entire day. That it was being held remotely meant that I could attend from the comfort of home, could make another hearing (and so helping make the court system work more efficiently) and get on with the rest of my (never-ending) workload. So, yes, remote hearings do have their issues. But as a plea from the junior Bar to those in charge of listing, recognise the issues with remote hearings but work to make them better, rather than getting rid of them entirely. They are time- and cost-efficient for the courts, for the clients and especially for the barristers appearing in front of you.
