BPTC How to Succeed at the Junior Bar How to Succeed at the Junior Bar, His Honour Judge Shaun

Lyons, CBE

You will be told this innumerable timesknow your papers. The other day we had a minor meltdown in court when someone of eight years call stood up in front of me and I asked them a question about the papers they had and they said, well I only got them on Friday your Honour (pause). I was deeply unimpressed and Im afraid to say when you start, youll all be getting your papers at six or seven in the evening and youll be appearing at ten the morrow morning. So, know your papers. That doesnt mean, please, reciting them by heart. Look at them and understand them. So if youre appearing for the crown in a PCMH, the first thing you do is you look at the indictment and then you read the evidence. Does the evidence prove the charge on the indictment? If it doesnt there are two things. Either youve got the wrong charge, or you need more evidence. Classically, the police, CPS, everyone under pressure, theres a pub fight. Victim Jane says, I went to the pub with Fred, Bill, Jim and John and I was attacked by this man who is the defendant who put a glass in my face. And you look at the papers and you see the complainants story and then you look at the interview and you see the defendants and you say, well where is the evidence of James, Jim, Bob and Bill who were there at the time?. And if you are prosecuting, do ask that question before you get into court, because then youll have the answer ready when the judge asks: was no one else in this pub who saw this?, are there any neutral witnesses?, alright. Think about what it is. Therell be all sorts of things, Im not going to go into them now. But if its an ID case, check on the ID. Other witnesses Ive dealt with, are there going to be forensics?, is there blood?, all the rest of it. If youve got an option in the case there, ask them for gods sake ask

BPTC How to Succeed at the Junior Bar those questions. Because if I start asking them, and Ive got 30 matters before me, and you dont know the answers, youll be out of my court and youll come back when youve got the answers, I dont know, three quarters of an hour later, so do it early. Exactly the same for the defence, for heavens sake, know what your clients case is. A very good discipline is this, whether youre for the crown or the defence. Say to yourself, if this kind and gentle judge who has all morning to listen to my one matter, asks me to describe my case in two minutes, can I do it?. And I mean two minutes. No evidence, principles. What the issue is. Practice that and it will focus your own mind. So, what about when you get to court. Get there early. Right. Be very nice to the court staff. If youre very nice to the court staff and send them Christmas cards and you remember their birthdays, you end up as a judge. Alright. Because when theyre looking to make judges, and they ask around and say how are they doing, who do they ask? Court clerks and ushers (Sigh) Mr Lyons, hes so nice he always asks after my dog. But, for heavens sake, get there early. Youve got a defendant, hes the one important man. Now when I say grovel to everybody, the one person you dont grovel to is the defendant. If you do, youre lost. If that defendant goes back to Greg and says, Miss Smith or Mr Smith was rude, unfeeling and didnt represent what I wanted to the court, so be it. You can tell Greg why. It may be that he wanted himyou to make a seventh bail application impromptu and you said it was inappropriate and he threw aa hissy fit at you, So be it. Its very difficult, the toughest job I think of all at the junior Bar is dealing with the clients because, it may amaze you to know, theyre not always the nicest people in the world. Theyre certainly not most truthful and they certainly have no interest in helping you get their case ready. Because theyd much rather their case never came

BPTC How to Succeed at the Junior Bar on. Right. After youve dealt with the client or the police officer or the CPS, butter up everybody in the court staff because they can really make your life very much easier. Make a friend of the list officer. Check in with the court clerk. If youve got three things in three different courts in my building, you might escape at the end of the morning with your head still on your shoulders, provided youve bribed the court staff in one case in one court, not to call the case on until youve dealt with the courtthe case in another court. But if your case is called on because you havent had the courtesy to tell my usher youre tied up somewhere else, it wont be a happy morning. Please talk to your opponent. One of the greatest errors I think amongst the junior bar is they think that they get up in the morning, particularly when its not a trial situation pro-preparatory and they are adversarial from that moment. They dont enquire who their opponent in the case is. If they do know who it is, they avoid them. And they stand up in front of me and some child for the defence says Your Honour we havent had A,B,C,D,E,F,G a great long string of woe and misery, and I say, just hold on, have you talked to Mr.Poo? about this. Oh no, Your Honour. Straight out of court, talk to each other, come back in when youve sorted it out. The whole point is, you dont have to slaughter each other the whole time. Work together, it helps your client, it helps the system, it helps the taxpayer, it helps you. Define the issues between yourself. Dont make me drag it out of you in court. Know what your differences are, resolve them as much as you can, when you cant ask me for orders or guidance. Ninety percent of what you do in court preliminary hearings or even at trial is common sense and administration alright. So, what is the best thing about advocacy? Weve gone through getting there early, meeting your opponent, being nice to the court staff. Its all a life of grovel, its awful.

BPTC How to Succeed at the Junior Bar But, advocacy starts with appearance. If youre early, youre unlikely to be flustered. If you.dont worry youll get there with an hour and a half, and your client will turn up with four minutes but thats life. If youve talked to these people, youll be confident about what youre going to do. So, no one expects you to look like a fashion plate. For gods sake, be neat and tidy, clean, stand up, and try and look as though you know whats going on. You might even fool yourselves if you do. So, thats the physical presentation of it and the appearance. The other, the verbal, is much more difficult. Everyone develops their own style. I would very much advise against what I would call florid advocacy. Dont commence something, bloody well start it. Alright, you know. Theres a tendency to drop into jargon, and you see it with police officers, theyre always you know going in a northerly direction and all the rest of it. Speak English. Youve got twelve people over there in your jury if its a trial, they have got to understand. If they dont understand your case you might as well pack your bags and go home. So theres no chance Im going to understand it if you use any long words at all. So, plain simple speech, and I think really what I want to say about being a junior barrister is this: Its very difficult, you do get paid very very little. The courts are not unaware of it. They will try and assist you if they can so you can do four or five hearings in a morning, otherwise your travel up to the court, back again, and what you pay the clerk and the instructed advocate, will leave you in probably negative equity. But, never leave a set of papers without giving it value added. I dont care if you only tidy up the papers and put them in chronological order. You must never let a case pass through your hands without getting better. You of course have to record on your brief the judges orders. Do a bit more than that. Write a note. Communicate with Greg if hes instructing you. Make quite sure,

BPTC How to Succeed at the Junior Bar whoever amongst your unfortunate colleagues picks up those papers next really understands what was said in court. I received a rather concerned missive from a senior member of the bar today, who about three weeks ago had had the somewhat difficult job of offering no evidence in a seven week sexual assault case, which the crown had had for ten months. And three weeks before the trial they decide to offer no evidence. Now a fairly dispassionate look at it, you might have expected the crown prosecution would have taken that decision some eight months earlier. Nevertheless, this person had the difficult task of presenting it and I made it quite difficult because in the ten months since it had come before my court, the defendant of course had been in custody for six of them. Six months of someones life, three weeks before the trial we stop it. She did it very well, as I expected someone of her call, well known in the court would do. I then awarded defence costs out of central funds. Now, I dont know who was appearing for the defence that day. It certainly wasnt trial counsel, so it was probably the chambers cat whod been sent along wearing a wig. But that barrister had informed defence solicitors that I had made a personal costs order against the prosecution council. And I was sent a copy of the letter the solicitor had very kindly sent to counsel saying, although this seems quite extraordinary I am told that perhaps we should discuss before I put in X thousand pounds So please do make sure you record what the orders are and if you dont know ask your opponent and if you dont know, ask the court clerk, because that gave someone some real concern.