On 14 October 1977 I was admitted to membership of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple and just under two years later on the night of Thursday 26 July 1979 in Middle Temple Hall was ‘called to the Bar’.
I retain few records of those early days, but one, an old double ledger accounts book, reveals a membership subscription for my Inn of Court costing £85 (allowing for inflation, the 1979 current equivalent being £518 – although now membership of Middle Temple is only £125) and £9 for my dinners for that term (current equivalent £58.26). To join the students’ association was a further £1 (£6.43). My call fee in 1979 was £75 (£485 – contrast current charge of £125), the cost of my court suit and collars from Coles Menswear was £49.50 (£320), my second hand barrister’s wig £75 (£485 – current cost new is £550), a gown from Ede & Ravenscroft £26 (£168 – current cost £149) and a blue bag £12.90 (£83.50 – current cost £85) – giving a then current equivalent of £2,124) . My first two fees as a barrister came a year later – £75.50 and £50 (current equivalent total £812.38).
To pay my way through the vocational stage and pupillage I worked evenings in a Cafe-Theatre in South Moulton Street, Saturdays selling hats for Charles Batten milliners of Beak Street Soho, and Sundays selling posters and cards at Athena Leicester Square.
In the year of my call there were but 6,500 barristers in private practice. There are nearly 17,000 now. Before the inception of the Combined Court Centre, 144 towns had their original Crown Court (replaced by 92 modern courts), back then housed in Victorian and Edwardian buildings with stone staircases, draughty corridors, clanking heating systems and visiting judges. Being local to the communities they served, the Crown Courts and their feeder Magistrates Courts were attended by local solicitors who would instruct their favourite counsel by hand-delivered brief. At the date of my call the Courts Act had been in existence for just nine years; and not until 2005 was the Lord Chancellor replaced by the Lord Chief Justice as President of the Courts of England and Wales and Head of Judiciary.
After qualifying I would tour the Surrey courts to prosecute criminal cases with a fistful of hand-written instructions from Messrs Wontner & Sons, solicitors for Surrey Constabulary. The Crown Prosecution Service did not exist before 1986, so prior to this, individual police forces instructed local firms of solicitors to prosecute contested charges. Indeed it was the failure of a barrister to turn up at the Inner London Sessions that gave me my first taste of presenting a contested case – and precipitated my move to the Bar.
What about the next forty four years? If I remain part of it, mine will mercifully be a brief role, my appearances in court tending now to be more cameo than lead. But I sense the part played by judges, courts and lawyers will remain pivotal – despite the reduced access to justice due to the cost of litigation and the alternatives provided by dispute resolution and artificial intelligence. Combining the latter could provide the solution to most routine conflicts. Guided by regulated AI, lawyers will be in the ideal position to forecast litigation outcomes and better advise terms of settlement. After all, AI will not only access every relevant statute, expert text, legal authority and judicial guidance, but could import local bias, be it geographic or judicial. I predict future studies in which case outcomes suggested by AI are compared favourably with the actual decisions of judges.
As, when and if that happens – who would want to risk their shirt in court?
Advertisements appearing within and below this post are placed by the platform not the writer. They are neither endorsed nor monetarised.
*
*
*
*
Stephen Twist's Barrister Blog 