barmag67 Jan. 2016 | Page 30

The Thirtieth annual Bar Conference and Young Bar Conference 2015 Elizabeth Robson Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers finds lots to talk about… from Magna Carta and human rights to the scandal of ‘referral fees’ S o much to do, so little time! It would not be unfair to say that the 30th Bar Conference held at the Westminster Park Plaza, London on 17th October 2015 presented delegates with a rich and almost overwhelmingly varied feast of inspirational and certainly informative events all in one day. But which to choose? In addition to the speeches -- and really quite riveting they were too -- there were no less than twenty-two breakout seminars, referred to as ‘specialist sessions’ which covered a wide and just possibly bewildering range of topics, from litigants in person and McKenzie friends, to surveillance and privacy, to new business and new developments, right though to the pleasures and the pitfalls of public access. But more about all this later. Suffice to say that whatever the topic, the general theme of the Conference centred round ‘our role as advocates in the balance between citizen and state’ as introduced in the opening remarks by the Conference Chairman, Kama Melly of Park Square Barristers. Magna Carta There were two anniversaries noted and alluded to. One was the thirtieth anniversary of the Conference itself. The other -- speaking of the balance between citizen and state -- was the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, sealed, (not signed) by an illiterate, reluctant and surly King John. Now there’s a document with an amazing degree of in-built survivability. Despite being rescinded a month after it was sealed at Runnymede and then, over the centuries, variously ignored, scorned, challenged, belittled and vilified, Magna Carta has attained almost mythic status among those who are rather fond of freedom and love the law, as it correspondingly strikes terror in the hearts of despots and dictators everywhere. If you want a very recent example, recall that Chinese government declared the Great Charter to be too ‘sensitive’ to be displayed via a touring exhibition to the general public. So it was rather cheering to sit in among several hundred barristers in the main hall at the Westminster Park Plaza on a sunny morning back in October and listen to the laudatory remarks about the Great Charter made by Bar Council Chairman, Alistair MacDonald QC in his opening keynote address. ‘In this Magna Carta year,’ he said, ‘we remember that the Great Charter has underpinned our legal thinking for 800 years and played a major part in the formulation of the idea of a constitutional monarch, represented for centuries by the Crown in Parliament… and as a result of it, we have had the benefit of living in a remarkably stable society.’ That stability, combined with ‘a quite astonishing flexibility’ engendered by our proud history of jury trial and the common law has, in Alistair MacDonald’s view, ‘helped us maintain our position as a global financial centre against the stiffest competition’. He added that a vibrant legal infrastructure, admired and emulated in a number of other countries is ‘a vital component of our continued success’. ‘But -- there is also universal concern abroad about the direction in which our justice system is heading,’ he continued, citing ‘a number of issues across the fields of criminal and civil law which are having a damaging effect upon access to justice, fairness in civil society and our standing worldwide.’ Referring to the worrying diminution of legal aid and its attendant effects on a number of areas, including professional ethics, as well as access to justice for the lay client, he spoke of the ‘misalignment; in which justice is viewed as an optional extra.’ Discussing the public interest in general and pro bono in particular, he pronounced pro bono as ‘a fine contribution to society, but… no substitute for a properly funded legal aid system.’ Referral Fees: ‘like drug cheats in sport’ The highlight of his speech however, for many a beleaguered barrister, was an exhilaratingly fierce condemnation of ‘referral fees’ deceitfully termed ‘administration fees’ by many an opportunist solicitor. (We know who a lot of you are.) Commenting on the announcement from the Ministry of Justice that it would seek to crack down hard on referral fees, Alistair MacDonald called for a complete ban on all such fees paid to instructing solicitors by advocates. (We are getting to know who you are too.) ‘Like the drug cheats in sport,’ he said, ‘…there are no depths to the ingenuous and ingenious means by which the cheats would seek to dress up their referral fees.’ Well received by the assembled delegates, (as you can imagine) the matter of referral fees turned out to be one of the hotter topics of the day, together with a lot of other vexed questions relating to remuneration and the acquisition of new business. 30 the barrister Hilary Term 2016 barmag67.indd 30 03/12/2015 10:21