T One Bar: Experiences of Employed Barristers

ONE BAR: EXPERIENCES OF EMPLOYED BARRISTERS

From an online panel discussion held on 24 June 2021, chaired by Master Sara Lawson (Serious Fraud Office) with Sarah Williams (Payne Hicks Beach), Master James Kitching (Fried Frank), Simon Regis (DCMS Legal Advisers) and Master Anupama Thompson (Harrow Crown Court).

SARA LAWSON QC SERIOUS FRAUD OFFICE

There are lots of ways of getting to where you want to be. This panel presentation is really to encourage everyone to open up and think about what is out there and what’s on offer. Speaking personally, my journey to the Employed Bar was a very long one because I had been practising in chambers for more than 20 years when I become an employed barrister at the Serious Fraud Office as their general counsel. There are many pros and cons about being employed or being self-employed. The main things about being employed are the paid holidays, the regular salary, and the fact that you don’t actually have to go and tout for your work. And there’s also the big difference of maternity or paternity leave pay. There’s also, depending on your circumstances, chances of working part-time. There’s much more flexibility generally in terms of the hours you can work. On tonight’s panel, we have employed barristers in public service, employed barristers in private practice and law firms, and we also have a judge with us who is going to talk about her journey from the Employed Bar to the bench. SARAH WILLIAMS PAYNE HICKS BEACH

I’m Sarah Williams, an employed barrister in the family department at Payne Hicks Beach. I started at the Bar in Manchester at 18 St John Street, a common law set with a fantastic pedigree. The Head of Chambers, Rodney Klevan QC, was a remarkable advocate who achieved outstanding jury successes. The common law pupillage work was just bustling. The late 1990s was a thrilling time to be at the SelfEmployed Bar. There was a real vibrancy about the local Bar.

I had a really mixed bag of crime and family. Manchester was still doing armed robberies long after it had gone out of fashion in London. I enjoyed being led on heavyweight cases like that and fraud. However, after a time, I moved over to practising exclusively family law. The Family Bar in Manchester was incredibly vibrant, and we didn’t have to travel off circuit. As a junior barrister, I was privileged to be instructed on high quality work: it was commonplace to appear in the High Court on a regular basis and before remarkable judges like Baroness Hale and Sir Nicholas Wall. I felt incredibly spoilt and very lucky. I don’t think I’m looking back with rose-tinted glasses, but there were no concerns about the levels or quality of work; it was a very collegiate atmosphere in chambers and a vibrant local Bar within a very sociable Northern Circuit.

It was a huge wrench when I left the Bar after ten years to relocate abroad for family reasons. I then had three children and we lost three parents in quick succession. There were ten years when I didn’t work. While looking after the family, I always filled my time with charity work but with a legal bent: Citizens Advice, Mind (Welfare Reform Act) and the NSPCC.

When it came to thinking about what to do next, in terms of actually earning money and re-establishing a career, I was really stuck. I think having had such a heavy court-based practice, I felt quite unemployable and only qualified for legal research, drafting skeleton arguments, and courtroom advocacy – I couldn’t imagine myself in an office-based environment. I envisioned the London Bar as not compatible with having three small children, so I discounted that. I thought, I’ll just see what I can do in-house. Through a friend of a friend I ended up taking a job in an international law firm. They assured me that it was a very sleepy family practice, but within about two weeks, the most enormous multimilliondollar divorce came through the door from Silicon Valley.

That experience of being immersed in a long-running, high-profile international matter was utterly thrilling, re-ignited my desire to act on serious family law matters and facilitated the move into a specialist city family law firm in London and then onto PHB, which is a wonderful firm with extraordinary family work.

That experience of being immersed in a long-running, high-profile international matter was utterly thrilling, re-ignited my desire to act on serious family law matters and facilitated the move into a specialist city family law firm in London and then onto PHB, which is a wonderful firm with extraordinary family work.

JAMES KITCHING FRIED FRANK

I’m reminded of a quote by a travel writer that “some beautiful paths cannot be discovered without first getting lost”.

I began professional life as a pupil in a leading set of criminal chambers, with a resolute ambition of forging a career as a jury advocate. Like many individuals fresh out of Bar school, I had youthful aspirations of being the next George Carman or Richard Du Cann. Nothing less would suffice. Twenty years later, I’m a partner in a US firm, now practising principally commercial law and largely from behind a desk, although with regular forays into courts and tribunals around the world.

Several people I have spoken to who have followed a similar route talk about reaching a ‘tipping-point’, when they decided to leave the Self-Employed Bar and join employed practice. In retrospect, there were probably many ‘tippingpoints’. I recall vividly, for example, the time when I was required to catch the first train out of Paddington at 5.03am and get across to Cardiff and up into the valleys for a bail application at Pontypridd Magistrates Court. For that, I paid the princely sum of £337 in train fares and bus fares and was rewarded some months later with a £48.50 brief fee.

I look back upon these episodes fondly now as ‘character building’ – although, I dare say that such experiences probably wouldn’t be viewed so charitably when measured against today’s standards. Overall, my experience of the Self-Employed Criminal Bar was that there were a huge number of positives: the gravity of the work; the camaraderie; and, surprisingly, the good humour. I’ll always look back fondly on the fantastic ‘on-the-job’ training that I received and the opportunity to cut my teeth.

But, after four or five years, I began to experience a number of frustrations with self-employed practice: there were large periods of time waiting around; the pressure of being in court every day and the antisocial hours; and, finally, the lack of any international dimension.

I decided to leave the Self-Employed Bar and go in-house, ultimately becoming a partner. My present role is much broader in scope than that of a criminal advocate – it reflects the fact that today’s high-value, complex, commercial disputes do not tend to come neatly packaged. My clients look to me to solve all aspects of their problems – and that might include a civil exposure, a regulatory component or a potential criminal liability. Often, we are co-ordinating parallel proceedings across multiple jurisdictions as well. Examples of recent cases that Fried Frank have been involved in include the Madoff scandal, FX and LIBOR fixing, and, more recently, the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) fraud.

My present role is much broader in scope than that of a criminal advocate – it reflects the fact that today’s high-value, complex, commercial disputes do not tend to come neatly packaged. My clients look to me to solve all aspects of their problems – and that might include a civil exposure, a regulatory component or a potential criminal liability.

SIMON REGIS DCMS LEGAL ADVISERS

I’m currently Deputy Director, leading a team dealing with culture, sport and gambling at Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) Legal Advisers in the Government Legal Department (GLD). In terms of my career history and, in particular, looking at managing the transition from the Self-Employed Bar, I would say it was easier for me because I moved into employed practice with the Civil Service very early on. I finished my pupillage at Furnival Chambers and was unsuccessful at gaining tenancy, so I took up a post at the Criminal Confiscation Branch (CPS). Flexibility, the introduction to a regular salary and holiday pay and sick pay and pension made me think being employed is not a bad thing. One thing I did have to grapple with, because it was one of the reasons I joined the profession in the first place, was around advocacy. I had to settle with myself to say, I’m no longer going to be an advocate before the courts, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to be an advocate because I advocate every day in different fora. And once I’d come to accept that, that I wouldn’t necessarily be getting up before a judge, but I would be presenting my arguments before clients and ministers, that made me accept that transition a lot better.

I have made quite a lot of use of the fact that within the Civil Service you can move around. I started off in a temporary post at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). I then moved to the Government Legal Service (GLS as it was then called) at HM Customs and Excise and spent three years dealing with international co-operation in criminal matters. I’ve had two stints in a non-legal role, one running the UK Central Authority at the Home Office (mutual legal assistance), thereafter working for the Council of Europe to lead a project on international co-operation in criminal matters. On return, I did a short stint at HMRC dealing with VAT fraud in the civil courts, before moving to the Treasury Solicitor’s Department (TSol). During my time at TSol, now GLD, I have held litigation roles in the areas of immigration and Ministry of Justice (MoJ) private law. I worked on the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (and its non-statutory predecessor). I came back into GLD and moved from litigation into an advisory post working for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and just after that, and this is my most recent post, moving into DCMS Legal Advisers.

I did lose my connection with and engagement with the Bar and with The Inner Temple when I moved into employed practice. I have re-established those connections and it is important that they are maintained.