In Brief Aug 2018

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ACCESS TO JUSTICE FOUNDATION ! Unlocking Funds for Justice – Pro Bono Cost Orders What are Pro Bono Cost Orders? Pro Bono Costs (PBC) are like ordinary legal costs, but where the winning party was represented for free in relation to proceedings. Introduced in October 2008 with the aim of levelling the playing field for pro bono assisted parties, they prevent the losing party from escaping an order for costs that previously would not have been obtainable due to the indemnity principle, whilst also creating a new form of funding to support the provision of free legal help to those in need. If a civil case is won with the help of any sort of free representation, PBCs can be awarded by the County Court, High Court, Court of Appeal (Civil Division) and Supreme Court, or included in settlement agreements. The amount is based on what a paying client would recover, and in accordance with Section 194 of the Legal Services Act 2007 must be paid to the prescribed charity, the Access to Justice Foundation (ATJF), which distributes the money to agencies and projects that provide legal assistance to the most vulnerable people in society. Case Study – Anthony Pavlovich A tenant of 3 Verulam Buildings and a panel member of the Bar Pro Bono Unit, Anthony has taken on significant pro bono cases in the past, one of which in January 2018 resulted in a agreement due to the fact that the PBC would have increased significantly had the case gone to trial (the total being a five-figure sum!). More recently, Anthony secured a PBC from the case of Soraya Soudmand v Shahin Soudmand in Preston County Court, totalling £8000, which was paid to the ATJF. Having heard about PBCs whenever he signed up for pro bono work, Anthony was pleased to have seen such costs paid to the Foundation, which itself continues to work with the Bar Pro Bono Unit to encourage barristers to take on such work and where possible ensure that they obtain PBCs. About the Access to Justice Foundation Currently celebrating its 10-year anniversary, the ATJF is the legal profession’s national charity to support pro bono and advice agencies. It was established by the Law Society, Bar Council, Chartered Institute of Legal Executives and Advice Services Alliance, and is supported by the Judiciary, Ministry of Justice and Attorney General’s Office. Joined by a network of seven regional Legal Support Trusts, the Foundation aims to improve nationwide access to justice by ensuring that funds can be distributed to where ! they are needed most throughout England and Wales. ! Although the ATJF also raises funds through a variety of events with the Legal Support Trusts, as well as through the It’s Not Just Peanuts campaign (in which law firms donate their unclaimed client account balances), some of its biggest contributions come from the receipt of PBCs. Indeed, the Foundation is currently trying to boost awareness of such cost orders, given the large amount of funds they can generate for legal advice organisations (and completion of their brief survey found at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/T85DWVS is greatly encouraged!). With the help of these contributions, the Foundation has recently distributed funds to organisations such as the Durham Citizens Advice Bureau, Liverpool Law Clinic, Rochdale Law Centre and Direct Help & Advice (Derby), which has allowed them to continue to support the most disadvantaged people in their regions. For more information about the work of the Foundation or about PBCs, please visit http://www.atjf.org.uk or email costs@atjf.org.uk. The Access to Justice Foundation is a company limited by guarantee (No. 6714178) and is a charity registered in England and Wales (No. 1126147) and in Scotland (No. SC048584). Its registered office is The National Pro Bono Centre, 48 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1JF. 12 In Brief
The Collected Ramblings of a Disaffected Northern Circuiteer Part 11: The one about GDPR and the missing corkscrew ________________________________________ RAMBLINGS I am going to begin this column on a subject that I know will drive many of you up the wall. That is, unless you are already up there. GDPR. However, here’s something I bet you didn’t know. The Gross Domestic Product of Russia has been substantially bolstered in recent times by a surge in assassination fee income. This follows a visit by an International Delegation from the Bar Council (something you and I paid for) to advise on the tremendously well-received AGFS in Standard Crime Contracts. You can’t help thinking that something might have got a bit lost in translation, nonetheless, our Eastern Slavic neighbours have embraced the concept hook, line and sinker. The Assassin’s Graduated Fee Scheme offers all the bells and whistles that ours does with fixed fees for pleas and ineffective or cracked hits, special preparation and wasted preparation, and enhanced rates for Very High Cost Cases, particularly those with a cross-border element. Anyone who protests about AGFS gets shot. There’s probably a fixed fee for that, too. The problem is that like us, they are paying the price for piling it high and paying too cheap. Following a recent consultation process, the Russkies are now proposing reforms to AGFS to counter the rise in what has become known as pseudoassassinations. This is where the fixed fee doesn’t quite stretch to doing the job properly the first time around and it has to be done again. ***** On a more serious note, GDPR has added yet more ballast to the already overburdened supertanker that is Northern Quarter Chambers, as we ply our increasingly hazardous trade in the choppy waters of the Northern Circuit. However, anyone would think we were sailing an American aircraft carrier through the Straits of Hormuz the way Chambers has reacted. When I started in Chambers, which was close to the dawn of civilisation, we just used to talk about problems and hope they went away. Now we panic, form a committee and spend money. Ken is our new Digital Security Officer. Like most judicial appointments these days, he was selected from a longlist of one. Ken shares a room with Boris, who you may recall is our Stasi-trained sniffer dog. We call it ‘the compound’. No-one goes there unless they have to. Together, Ken and Boris are designed to repel all threats. The problem with Ken is that he comes from an IT background and like all IT boffins, he talks in a sort of sci-fi gibberish that none of us can understand, and he does it with alarming regularity. His latest email proposed that we migrate Chambers funds to a cryptocurrency on a decentralised distributed ledger system. No kidding. I got the proverbial bollocking from Miranda, our Head of Chambers, by sending a ‘reply all’ to Ken to unsubscribe from his circulation list in accordance with a privacy policy he recently put in place. In a scene that could have been lifted from ‘Yes Minister’, I was told in no uncertain terms that our privacy policy wasn’t actually intended be a policy about privacy at all. It was just ‘ticking a box’. My box has been ticked. ***** One of the greatest avoidable man-made disasters of the modern era is the Chambers ‘away-day’. We have these every two to three years, because it takes two to three years for the bitterness and recriminations to die down after the last one. In truth, the problems usually begin before we even step foot out of Chambers when everyone realises how much the whole thing is going to cost, but in true barrister fashion we are quite good at spending money we haven’t got. That said, this trip was a biggie, organised by Miranda herself, tapping up all of her French connections. We were going to charter a private jet to Nice and pick up a fleet of air-conditioned limousines to take us to a delightful Provencal Chateau for winetasting followed by dinner. At least that was the plan. We didn’t quite make it to the dinner bit. One of the rather regrettable features of Bar Mess on the Northern Circuit is that the Crim bods help themselves to wine, as if tomorrow is strike day. And so it was at the Chateau, much to the chagrin of our sommelier, a nervous French woman who must have thought that Brexit was heralding another Hundred Years’ War. We might have got away with it until it an ‘audit’ at the end revealed that we were down thirty-six bottles and missing a corkscrew. They took our whip-round as an admission of guilt and marched us all off to an investigating magistrate. Naturally, at times like this it is important to nominate one of your number to carry the can for the rest of you so we volunteered the most culpable looking junior, Gary Gillow, a pale-skinned prosecutor from Preston. Naturally, none of the Silks were prepared to offer their services on a pro-bono basis so we propelled him in the general direction of the dock with all the bonhomie we could muster. The exchange in court went something like this: Magistrate: You are English, yes? Gillow: Err…oui (turning to us, giving a thumbs up and a wink) Magistrate: (Rolling his eyes) Your profession? Gillow: Err…(looking at us, nervously) Barrister (he then smiled, which, with hindsight, probably wasn’t the best thing to do) Magistrate: (Eyebrows raised) …and these? (gesturing to us) Gillow: (looking at us, nervously) Barristers (smiling again). It may not have been blistering advocacy but it seemed to do the trick. Indeed, it can’t be often they get a lawyer in the dock, tooled up with twenty-three of the Northern Circuit’s finest pleaders. The Magistrate looked at us for a while, not sure whether to laugh or cry, but like all judges, he manoeuvred himself down the path of least resistance. Magistrate: Expulser! I thought that meant we could go, but apparently, it’s some kind of deportation order. Fancy that! Anyway, at least we saved on the limos back to the airport, as we rode in style under armed escort from a high-ranking officer with his own name on the side of the vehicle - Gen Darmerie. Back in Chambers, we did at least put a positive spin on things. The next edition of our Chambers Newsletter had a marvellous caricature of Gillow under the headline: “Northern Quarter sample French justice in extradition battle as guilty Gillow gets the Guillotine.” I think Miranda is going to let the dust settle a bit before we open an annex there and offer our services more widely. ________________________________________ John Knott is a member of Northern Quarter Chambers on the Northern Circuit and practises from Chambers in Liverpool, Manchester, Wigan and soon the Cote d’Azur. He is also a convicted felon. In Brief 13
Page 1 and 2: Eric Goldrein Women in the Law Well
Page 3 and 4: EDITORIAL From the Editor Elliw Rob
Page 5 and 6: CIRCUIT NEWS A new face at the Circ
Page 7 and 8: CHARITY NEWS Deans Court run the Ma
Page 9 and 10: In Brief 9
Page 11: WELLBEING Wellbeing on the Northern
Page 15: EVENTS ON CIRCUIT From the Pillory

In Brief Aug 2018

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