Tag Archives: Law

Did this kitten really conduct a criminal trial by itself… and WIN?

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I am informed that one of the liberties you can take as a writer with a (undeserved and long-suffering) loyal following is to indulge in a little creative sleight of hand. One might, for example, in an effort to gain wider attention for a mundane-sounding issue, attach a ludicrous and unrelated clickbait headline to draw in the unwary – possibly including a shareable photo – with quiet confidence that you’ll be forgiven once the Greater Good of your evil plan becomes apparent.

original

Let’s put that theory to the test.

Because, and this will surprise you, there is no kitten conducting criminal trials (or at least not winning them). The cat in the photo is not a registered practitioner. Instead, now that you’re three paragraphs in, we’re going to talk about the Ministry of Justice Single Department Plan.

Stay with me – we’ll be quick. Anger is conducive to brevity. This is the document published today setting out the MoJ’s “priorities” for the year ahead. The four key objectives are identified as:

  1. Provide a prison and probation service that reforms offenders
  2. Deliver a modern courts and justice system
  3. Promote a global Britain and the rule of law
  4. Transform the department

Of themselves, these objectives are inoffensive enough. Indeed, what the plan says about prisons has much to recommend it, particularly the emphasis on tackling reoffending through a focus on education and employment opportunities for prisoners. We’ll overlook for now whether bold solutions to improving prisons such as “preventing and disrupting serious and organised crime in prisons” are really solutions as much as vaguely-defined objectives. And whether any strategy to “ensure a sustainable prison population” can sensibly say nothing whatsoever about the steady increase in the average length of custodial sentences imposed by the courts. Those are quibbles for another day.

Because the silence that rings the loudest is that surrounding the dismal state of the criminal justice system. While, true to form, the MoJ trumpets its digital court modernisation programme at every turn (a counterpoint to which was provided the other week by the early progress report of the National Audit Office pointing out that said programme is already behind schedule, has “unresolved funding gaps” and will not deliver the benefits that the MoJ has claimed), much less is said about the problems that have forced criminal barristers to take urgent action and caused the entire system to grind to a halt. Below are just a selection, with the “Single Department Plan” response in bold.

  • The dilapidated state of our court estate is a matter of national shame. Ceilings are literally leaking human waste and falling in mid-trial. Courts all over the country now have no catering facilities – defendants, witnesses, jurors and lawyers are required (some under threat of imprisonment) to spend the day in a building where the public cannot even get a glass of water.  Nothing beyond a vague pledge to “continue the modernisation of our courts”.
  • The widespread scheme of court closures means that many people now have to travel several hours to reach their local court. Close even more courts: “Use fewer, better, more flexible court buildings more effectively for the benefit of citizens.”
  • The Crown Prosecution Service has lost a third of its staff since 2010 through budget cuts of over 25%. The problems this causes to the competent prosecution of cases is covered at length in the press (and in Chapter 4 of my book). No mention, save for a vaguely declared ambition to “improve the experience of victims of crime within the criminal justice system”.
  • Disclosure – the vital part of the criminal procedure where the police and prosecution provide the defence with material in their possession which could help establish someone’s innocence – remains a shambles. As a result, innocent people risk conviction. No mention.
  • The Innocence Tax continues to strip the homes and life savings away from innocent people wrongly accused of criminal offences. If you have a modest joint household disposable income, the state will refuse to give you legal aid, force you to pay privately for lawyers, and then when you are acquitted will refuse to fully reimburse you for your fees, potentially leaving you out of pocket to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds. No mention.
  • Legal aid rates, cut by around 40% in real terms, continue to force local solicitors’ firms out of business. Bright young people are either deterred from joining the criminal Bar, or forced out after a few years of earning below minimum wage. No mention.
  • Court listing practices continue to operate to please MoJ statisticians, to the detriment of victims, witnesses and defendants. People are dragged to court for their trial (thus allowing a court listing officer to say that the trial has been listed) only to find that their case cannot in fact be heard due to courtrooms sitting empty, as the MoJ won’t pay for judges to hear the trials. Trials are therefore adjourned repeatedly, sometimes until witnesses lose faith entirely and walk away from the process. No mention, save for a vaguely declared ambition to “improve the experience of victims of crime within the criminal justice system”.
  • Chris Grayling’s policy to deny victims of miscarriages of justice any compensation for years wrongly spent in prison continues to bite. Unless you can prove your innocence, you do not get a penny. No mention.
  • The number of unrepresented defendants in criminal proceedings is on the rise, and judges have expressed their concern in a report which the MoJ tried to hide (over which the MoJ has now been reported to the Information Commissioner). No mention.

All of these share a common diagnosis: they are the result of the unparalleled cuts that the Ministry of Justice budget has suffered since 2010 – 40% will have been slashed by the end of the decade.

What does the MoJ’s Grand Plan for 2018/19 say about this? Does it acknowledge the problem? Does it vow to fight the Treasury for the funds that the system desperately needs if it is not to collapse altogether?

Not quite. The MoJ promises instead to:

Maintain a continued tight grip on departmental finances

Which really says it all. This is not a department with an interest in improving the quality of justice. It is a cabal of ideologues playing financial chicken, tossing vulnerable people onto the motorways of fate with little care for the outcome, as long as they can boast to their betters about the tightness of their fiscal grip.

As of Friday, the criminal Bar will be withdrawing the goodwill on which the justice system runs. Documents such as this from the MoJ, making quite plain how utterly unimportant they consider our criminal justice system to be, make me seriously consider just walking away entirely.

 

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Bashing burglars and the law of self-defence

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The headlines and news bulletins over the past two days have focused on this story:

(Your attention is respectfully drawn to the headline, rather than the libido-boosting diet to beat the menopause (no HRT required.))

I make clear at the outset that I offer no comment whatsoever on this particular case. While the editorial slants of the tabloids may hint at two-fingered salutes to the law of “strict liability” contempt of court, I am going to play safe by disclaiming that, as criminal proceedings in this case are “live” within the meaning of Schedule 1 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 (a suspect having been arrested without a warrant), what follows is intended as a contribution to a discussion in good faith of public affairs or other matters of general public interest.

What I want to look at briefly, therefore, is the law of self-defence in what lawyers euphemistically refer to as “householder cases” – where force is used by a householder against a trespasser in a dwelling. In dipping into this legalese, I do not for a moment seek to minimise or cloak the stark reality that confronting a burglar in your home is one of the most terrifying experiences imaginable. Burglary of somebody’s home is an offence which, in my view, is treated with relative disdain by the criminal justice system. Its ubiquity means that insufficient resources are made available to police to investigate (hence shocking reports of 9 out of 10 burglary investigations being closed without a suspect being identified). Its prevalence means it is considered by the CPS to be one of the least serious criminal offences for the purpose of instructing prosecuting barristers, attracting a miserly fee (£480 for a 2-day trial requiring on average 20 hours’ work (2 days at court plus a conservative 4 hours’ preparation), so around £24 gross an hour, of which I would take home about £12), and is therefore prosecuted often by the least experienced in our ranks. And, while I am not one predisposed towards longer sentences, I have a lot of sympathy with members of the public who feel that a Sentencing Guideline starting point of 1 year’s imprisonment, of which a defendant will serve a maximum of 6 months, does not adequately reflect the harm done by the violation that breaking into someone’s home represents. The after-effects can last forever. It is not a mere property offence; it is an encroachment into a person or a family’s safest space. And I think many of us in the system can become inured to that truth.

So there is my opening salvo: I hold no affection for burglars. Don’t allow the clinical nature of what follows to lead you to think otherwise.

But, since the tale of Tony Martin in 1997, elements of the press and the Conservative party have become fixated on the notion that an Englishman’s home is no more his castle; that, confronted by an intruder in the dead of night, the householder is required to deferentially hand over the code to the safe and ensure that the burglar is safely escorted from the premises with his bag of swag bulging and his bodily integrity intact. What followed, under the intellectual guidance of Chris Grayling, was a change to the law in 2012 seeking to persuade Middle England that, in the words of the prematurely-celebratory Sun headline, “It’s Official: You Can Batter a Burglar“. We’ll have a look below at what that means in practice.

 

The law of self-defence

It is a longstanding principle of English common law that a person is entitled to use reasonable force in self-defence, or in defence of another. There are also statutory defences of using reasonable force in defence of property or in the prevention of crime and arrest/apprehension of offenders.

In 2008, the common law defence of self-defence was put on a statutory footing in section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. What it means in practice is as follows:

  • A person acting in genuine self-defence is entitled to use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances as he believes them to be. This provides a defence to any charge of violence, up to and including the use of lethal force;
  • The first question that a jury must ask is Did the defendant believe or may he have believed that it was necessary to use force to defend himself an attack or imminent attack on himself or others or to protect property or prevent crime?
  • The second question is Was the amount of force D used reasonable in the circumstances, including the dangers as D believed them to be?
  • The burden is on the prosecution to disprove self-defence. It is not for a defendant to prove that he was acting in self-defence. The prosecution have to prove beyond reasonable doubt (so that a jury is sure) that the defendant was not acting in reasonable self-defence.

Let’s break down what this means.

“A genuine belief that force is necessary”

The question here is subjective – i.e. did the defendant genuinely believe he needed to use force in self-defence? It does not matter if the defendant was in fact mistaken, as long as he believed that at the time. So if a 6-foot man wearing a terrifying bear costume runs towards you brandishing what looks like a machete, and you genuinely believe he is about to attack you, the fact that you later realise the “machete” is a hunnypot and that you’ve KO’d Winnie The Pooh in front of a distraught crowd of Disneyland toddlers does not matter. The fact that your belief in the need for force was, by objective standards, unreasonable – who would mistake a hunnypot for a machete, for Lord’s sake? – does not matter at this stage. It might make the jury less likely to accept your insistence that your belief was genuine; however the bottom line is that a mistaken, unreasonable but genuinely-held belief in the need for force is enough. (The only exception is if your mistaken belief is due to your voluntary intoxication. Because, frankly, getting tanked on Stella and raining fury on Winnie The Pooh in a fountain is not something the courts can condone).

 

“Reasonable force”

Whether force is reasonable has to be judged by the circumstances as the defendant believed them to be, even if, as above, he was in fact mistaken. So if you genuinely believe that a machete attack is imminent, what is reasonable has to be assessed by reference to that belief. What is reasonable will obviously depend on the individual case, but section 76 reflects the famous words of Lord Morris in the case of Palmer v R 1971 AC 814, which are distilled in some form to juries when they are given their directions of law by the trial judge:

“If there has been an attack so that self defence is reasonably necessary, it will be recognised that a person defending himself cannot weigh to a nicety the exact measure of his defensive action. If the jury thought that that in a moment of unexpected anguish a person attacked had only done what he honestly and instinctively thought necessary, that would be the most potent evidence that only reasonable defensive action had been taken …”

Further pointers in section 76 include the provision that if force is “disproportionate”, it cannot by its nature be “reasonable”. Which sounds self-evident, one might think, but we’ll come to this more in a second. It is also made explicit that, while the possibility of a defendant having been able to retreat is a factor to consider when assessing reasonableness, there is no “duty to retreat”. It is also long-established that a person may strike pre-emptively – you do not need to wait to be hit.

So in a nutshell, the law of self-defence means that the prosecution must make a jury sure that either a defendant didn’t really believe he needed to use force, or that he did but used unreasonable force – for example killing someone with a gun in response to a slap to the face – bearing in mind the broad scope of appreciation allowed in these cases.

Simple, right? Well, not, sadly, in cases involving burglars. As we shall now see…

 

Householder self-defence

In 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron, having promised in his party’s manifesto to afford “greater protection” to householders who use force against burglars, said:

‘We’ll put beyond doubt that homeowners and small shopkeepers who use reasonable force to defend themselves or their properties will not be prosecuted.’

Quite how Mr Cameron intended to guarantee that fetter on the discretion of the independent Crown Prosecution Service was never explained, but the public was thereafter treated to Chris Grayling’s party piece at the Conservative party conference, which went someway beyond Mr Cameron’s hashed restatement of the existing law. And, as you might expect, Mr Grayling’s idea was as poor in execution as it was stupid in policy.

Grayling, having dissembled to the crowd about what the existing law of self-defence said, insisted that a new law was needed which changed the test.  No longer was “reasonable self-defence” a sufficient litmus. Instead, householders should only be convicted where they had used “grossly disproportionate” force. Merely “disproportionate” force, it followed, was no more than burglars deserved. Section 76(5A) was duly inserted into the Act.

Inevitably, once reality bit, Grayling’s dreams came crashing down around him. He lost the support of the Mail once they saw guidance sent to judges and prosecutors “admitting that the provision does not give householders free rein to use disproportionate force in every case they are confronted by an intruder.” (You can just hear the disappointment jumping off the page). The exemption did not apply to the use of force to protect property, for example. Nor did it apply to “non-dwelling buildings”. So if you saw someone stealing your lawnmower from your shed, you could not use disproportionate force to stop them.

But worst of all, when the High Court was called upon to interpret section 76(5A), it confirmed that its drafting did not in fact have the effect that Grayling had desired. The CPS had interpreted s.76(5A) in accordance with the newspaper headlines – only where the prosecution could prove grossly disproportionate force would it be appropriate to prosecute. But the High Court said otherwise: all the new law did was to confirm (as if confirmation were needed) that anyone using “grossly disproportionate” force could not, by definition, be using reasonable force. Force which was “merely” disproportionate could be reasonable in householder cases, but would not always be. The test, as with all cases of self-defence, remained whether force was “reasonable” in the circumstances.

So, in conclusion, where a householder is confronted by a burglar, if they genuinely believe they need to use force in self-defence, they can use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances. If they use “grossly disproportionate” force, they cannot rely on self-defence. If they use merely “disproportionate” force, that may or may not be reasonable. Got it? If not, you can blame Grayling for the unnecessary confusion injected by the pointless test of “gross disproportionality”.

 

Arrest

Much has been made about the fact that the 78-year old householder in the present case has been arrested and (presumably) interviewed by the police, before being released. It is worth remembering that the police have a legal duty to investigate cases where there has been a loss of life. Part of the investigation may involve arresting a suspect so that they can be interviewed.

Whether an arrest is necessary in a given case – as opposed to inviting a suspect in for an interview – depends on whether certain statutory factors have been satisfied. But on its face, there is little unusual in the police arresting somebody suspected of killing another person. The police will usually have a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed – because somebody has died a non-natural death – and the arrest will usually be necessary to allow a prompt and effective investigation, the combination of which means that an arrest is permissible. It is no indication of whether a charge will follow; rather it is on its face the police complying with their legal duties. When a suspect is arrested and detained at a police station, they have a panoply of rights, including the right to independent legal advice. If they are interviewed under caution (as one would expect), they will have the opportunity to advance any account of self-defence, which will then form part of the file that is passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for a charging decision.

 

The charging decision

The Code for Crown Prosecutors provides that when a charging decision is being taken the test is two-fold – (i) is there a realistic prospect of conviction on the evidence? (ii) Is a prosecution in the public interest. If a suspect offers self-defence as an explanation in their police interview, the CPS will have to be satisfied that there is sufficient evidence to disprove this beyond reasonable doubt, applying the above test. Even if they are satisfied of the evidence, they must then consider the public interest. CPS Guidance says:

When reviewing cases involving assertions of self-defence or action in the prevention of crime/preservation of property, prosecutors should be aware of the balance to be struck:

  • the public interest in promoting a responsible contribution on the part of citizens in preserving law and order; and
  • in discouraging vigilantism and the use of violence generally.

There is often a degree of sensitivity to be observed in such cases; this is particularly important when the alleged victim of an offence was himself/herself engaged in criminal activity at the relevant time. For instance, a burglar who claims to have been assaulted by the occupier of the premises concerned.

 

Conclusion

Upon inspection of most of the tabloid’s causes celebres, one will often find a fairly sensible explanation for a decision to prosecute a householder who has injured or killed a burglar. Sometimes, as with Tony Martin, the homeowner will have used lethal force on a burglar fleeing the property, or will have chased him down the street and given him a sound thrashing. The bottom line, as has always been the bottom line notwithstanding the dishonesty of Chris Grayling, is that using reasonable force against a burglar will rarely result in a prosecution, much less a conviction.

Your questions answered on the John Worboys judgment

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On Wednesday 28 March 2018, the High Court handed down its landmark judgment in the case of John Worboys, upholding the challenge by two of his victims to the Parole Board’s decision to release him. The judgment runs to over fifty pages and does not make for easy reading, so here’s my breakdown of this unusual and complex case for iNews.

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Legally Blonde: The Live Tweet

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In the final (for now) instalment in my relentless flogging of pop culture, Friday night was spent Live-Tweeting the legal cinematic classic, Legally Blonde. If you want to find out how it went, click on the Tweets below.

 

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Love In The First Degree: Analysing the legal misconceptions of Bananarama

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This weekend’s Twitter thread, which has received a surprisingly warm reception (even from Bananarama themselves), is as below. It is important, it struck me as I sat stationary on a snow-stranded train, that we always hold (girl) power to account and challenge legal myths wherever they arise, however difficult that may be.

🎵And the judge and the jury, they all put the blame on me

They wouldn’t go for my story, they wouldn’t hear my plea…

Only you can set me free, coz I’m guilty, guilty as a girl can be

Come on baby, can’t you see, I stand accuuuused of love in the first degree🎵

[THREAD]

There are many legal inaccuracies and errors that Bananarama fall into here. I think it’s important that we address them.

 

Firstly, Bananarama erroneously assume that the judge AND the jury are judging the merits of the defence. This is simply not true. Judges in Crown Courts, even Courts of Love, are judges of law alone. The verdict is for the jury.

 

The ONLY way this would stand up to scrutiny is if the judge had ruled, as a matter of law, that a particular defence was not available, and directed the jury in such terms. Absent further detail, we cannot assume that this happened.

 

Secondly, the existence of a jury indicates that there is a contested trial to determine guilt. HOWEVER…

 

…Bananarama confess – openly – that they are not only guilty, but guilty as a girl can be (by which they are presumably accepting a degree of culpability placing them at the top of the range of the highest category on the relevant Sentencing Guideline).

 

In such circumstances, it is nonsensical for them to express surprise or complaint at the jury rejecting their “plea” (by which they presumably mean defence). They are to blame for admitting guilt in front of the jury and for wasting scarce court resources on a needless trial.

 

If Bananarama simply wanted to contest the *factual basis* of their admitted guilt, then they should be having a trial of issue (“Newton hearing”) in front of a judge alone. Their advocate should have advised them as such. This is plainly negligent.

 

In any event, there are live criminal proceedings and Bananarama are imploring the key witness (“only you can set me free”) to intervene to prevent the consequences of their admitted criminality. Bananarama are shamelessly attempting to pervert the course of justice.

 

In these circumstances, it is frankly unsurprising that, at the start of the song, Bananarama are “locked in a prison cell”. The judge was clearly right to withhold bail given the substantial grounds for believing that Bananarama would interfere with witnesses if granted bail.

 

In practical terms, Bananarama would be properly advised to spend less time imploring the complainant to help them, and seek advice on the merits of an appeal against conviction. That they haven’t is almost certainly down to savage legal aid cuts depriving them of representation.

 

My view, for what it’s worth, is that such an appeal would have merit. Because, and I have reread ALL my law books to make sure I’m right on this, there is NO criminal offence in England and Wales of “love in the first degree.” This is simply a common tabloid misconception.

 

That the CPS charged this case at all is a damning indictment on its chronic lack of resources and obsession with targets above all else. Far better, I would advise, to concede the appeal and bring new charges for the perverting the course of justice (above).

 

In conclusion, nothing about this Bananarama trial sits right with me. While we must be calm and not jump to conclusions without knowing the full facts, I am deeply troubled that something has gone badly wrong. Or that Bananarama’s legal research is not what it should be.

[ENDS]

 

Next Friday (assuming the trains are still not moving): “Was Meatloaf being incited to commit a criminal offence, and therefore well within his rights to refuse to do *that*?”

Quick Q&A: The Supreme Court decision on John Worboys’ victims and police failings

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My latest piece for iNews, on the Supreme Court decision concerning the victims of John Worboys and their fight for compensation for police failings in the investigation into Worboys’ crimes, is available to read here, should this sort of thing be of interest:

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/police-fight-compensation-awarded-victims-john-worboys/

 

An idiot’s guide to navigating pupillage interviews

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The Times has today published a fine piece on applying for pupillage, reflecting the advice and experience of some survivors of the process, both applicants and interviewers. Having had the privilege of seeing life from both sides of the interview table, I thought I’d offer my own, largely worthless musings on the things I have learned.

A stock photo entitled “three women in suit sitting” which could also feasibly depict an interview.

  1. Have a good answer to the inevitable.

You will be asked why you want to be a barrister. You will be giving a variant of an answer the panel has heard a thousand times before. That is unavoidable. So don’t strain yourself stretching for originality; aim for simple honest sincerity. At my first ever interview, I span a fluffy cat story about how I was inspired by the story of somebody I met on a mini-pupillage, and how I aspired to tread in their footsteps. The disdain from the panel was palpable. For several interviews thereafter, I cleared my throat and proudly declared my thirst for justice, passion for advocacy and burning need to help the helpless, voice the voiceless and improve the unimprovable. Looking back, I was fortunate not to have a chair thrown at me. Forget cliché and invention and speak plainly. If I were transported back and asked once again why I want to be a barrister, my answer would be simple: because I want to do something exciting with my life. And at the criminal Bar, whatever brickbats we throw at the system and the punitive lifestyle the Bar engenders, life is never, ever dull.

 

  1. Why did you apply to this chambers in particular?

For the most part, the truthful answer will be: “Because you are a chambers, any chambers, and I would literally accept a pupillage in a chambers run by bees at this moment in time.” Again, it’s a nasty question that interviewers know is near-impossible to answer. If you’ve done a mini-pupillage at that chambers, that will help formulate a complimentary response. If not, scour the chambers website for self-congratulatory guff about “ethos” and “values” and try to pass those off as your own. Failing that, tickling the ego of your interviewers with a non-grovelly acknowledgment that the chambers is a “leading set” (all sets like to consider themselves leading) in the particular area of practice is a reasonably safe line.

This outstanding design is the talent of @teaforpterosaur

  1. Have something memorable or quirky on your CV or application

The blunt fact is that everybody being interviewed will have a good 2:1 or 1st class degree. Many will have Master’s degrees. All will have (or will shortly have) at least a Very Competent mark on the BPTC. All will have done debating, mooting and other forms of public speaking. Presidents of University Law Societies are ten-a-penny. The well-advised will also have squeezed some pro bono legal advisory work into their non-existent free time. These are all necessary but insufficient. None, I’m afraid, will stand you out in the memory of the panel. However, the fact that you are a decorated Morris dancer, or were thrashed by Daphne and co on Eggheads, or once interviewed Mike Tyson for your student newspaper with the opener (and closer), “For our readers who may not have heard of you, what do you do?” – these will remain with the panel afterwards. They show that you are human, intriguing and the kind of person that the interviewer actively wants to find out more about. And that is the very best impression you can leave.

 

  1. Have a non-legal topic in mind that you can talk about freestyle

Linked to the foregoing, make sure you have prepared to talk about something – anything – that is not law. There will be a lot of law chat. But there will almost always be a tangential diversion into matters of non-law, often preceded by a vicious, “Tell us more about yourself”. One interview I attended was even more brutal; we were given five minutes to think up a 2-minute presentation on a topic of your choice. Line up a few of these during your interview prep. Think of something non-legal (to demonstrate your glorious diversity) on which you have personal experience or strongly-held views, and have it wrapped up and ready to fire in the event it is called upon.

 

  1. Immerse yourself in current affairs

 Again, an interview staple. Read the newspapers. Gobble up Times Law, Legal Cheek, Legal Twitter, and blogs by proper lawyers and academics for hot takes on vexed issues of law and politics. A common interview trick is to ask you to argue one side of a debate, before immediately inviting you to argue the opposite. Draw up a list of likely topics and think about your arguments in advance. Also be aware of industry-specific issues that are of no interest to anybody outside the Bar, but of enormous importance inside our bubble. If you’re interviewing for a criminal pupillage, be prepared to answer, “What are the biggest challenges facing the criminal Bar?” Be opinionated without being obnoxious; political without being partisan. Stand your ground under pressure from smug interviewers, but be prepared to make concessions if your argument is expertly blown apart.

 

  1. Don’t be intimidated by chambers profiles.

Looking at the profiles of other junior tenants on the chambers website can be a sobering experience. You will read how your contemporaries spent a year as an intern on an international human rights case, or have written starry and brilliant articles, theses or even books on esoteric and impressively complex aspects of your chosen legal field. Many will have impressive previous careers, either in law or outside, and as a twenty-something BPTC graduate, it is easy to be gripped by inferiority. Don’t be. Your CV counts for absolutely nothing when you’re sitting in a cell opposite a screaming heroin addict who has stabbed his cellmate in the eye and is threatening to exact upon you his frustration that his solicitor hasn’t been to visit him. Nor does it matter a jot when you’re in front of a judge or jury pleading the unwinnable case (or worse, the eminently winnable). Your judgment and powers of advocacy are the skills that can’t be reflected on pornographic CVs, and are the ones that matter most. Practise on demonstrating those in interview.

 

  1. Don’t gabble

It sounds obvious, but nerves in interview upend the most poised performers in your advocacy classes. Your interview is a chance for you to demonstrate advocacy under pressure. Deep breaths, slow and considered responses and substituting a brief pause for “umm” or “err” or, heaven forfend, “like”, are mandatory habits. Even if the topic is your Mastermind subject, you win no points for speed.

 

  1. Prepare for the unexpected

Some chambers do things the old-fashioned way. China tea-pot, warm smiles, civil conversation. Some take a sadistic pleasure in setting you Total Wipeout style obstacle courses at a second’s notice. Impromptu presentations on random subjects; a Dragon’s Den pitch on something I had two minutes to invent; idiotic Oxbridge-interview questions (“If you were a banana, what car would you drive?” etc); deliberately confusing written exercises and needlessly aggressive interview styles were, and probably still are, all common features. In reality, “prepare for the unexpected” is fairly useless advice; the best antidote for this kind of stuff is experience. But try not to be fazed.

 

  1. Do have a question at the end

You will hear competing theories over whether you do in fact need to have a prepared response to the final, dreaded, “Do you have anything you’d like to ask us?” My advice is to have at least three questions in your back pocket (just in case the panel unhelpfully answer one or two of them in the course of the interview). Even if it’s something as simple as, “Roughly how long does it take for your junior tenants to start appearing regularly in the Crown Court?” If you really can’t think of a good question, don’t ask a bad one. But it shouldn’t be beyond your wit to come up with a couple, just to keep the conversation flowing. Oh, and under no circumstances ask, “Did I get the job?! LOLZ!” You will deserve everything you get.

 

  1. It all comes down to dumb luck

This, I’m afraid, is the reality. The pupillage statistics speak for themselves. Your odds are slim, and unless you are particularly brilliant (and most of us aren’t), you are competing against hundreds of people of comparable ability, intellect and experience. What separates you from the herd in the eyes of the interviewers is often wholly arbitrary and unexpected. I was lucky enough that a flippant topic I’d picked up on was of enormous interest to a wonderfully fun and quirky member of chambers on the panel, who quickly turned the conversation round to 1980s power ballads. That, I was later told, was the clincher. Others will have friends or family in chambers, or relatives in the judiciary. Nepotism and inherited privilege shouldn’t have their place at the modern Bar, but they linger. There are a million variables that may influence your chances in any given interview. Ask for feedback from unsuccessful interviews, and use anything constructive, but don’t let a run of rejections cause you to lose heart. All it takes to break a losing streak is just one lucky win.