The First Year in Chambers

Craig Carr
(Pupil October 2005 - September 2006. Became a tenant in October 2006)

Like pupillage, my first year in Chambers flew by with extraordinary speed. Upon becoming a tenant, nothing changes immediately insofar as the nature of the work that you receive is concerned. In the first couple of months as a tenant my work profile was very similar to that in the final few months of my pupillage; a diet of small claims hearings, civil and criminal applications and trials in the Magistrates’ Court. Over the year, as was the case over my second six, the amount of work that I did and its complexity gradually increased.

My practice is a mixture of civil and criminal work. In these chambers all juniors are encouraged to keep their practice mixed for their first five years before, if they so wish, choosing to specialise in one or the other. I’m particularly happy with this mix; the contrast adds an extra element of interest to each and it’s good to develop knowledge and skills on as many fronts as possible. Towards the end of pupillage and throughout my first year as a tenant I worked on disclosure in two fraud cases, one commercial and one criminal. As both were being litigated in Jersey, I spent two months there working on documents. I am now in court practically every day and spend a good period of my time on trains (in the past week alone I have travelled to Grantham, Derby, Leicester, High Wycombe and Bromley. Grantham and Derby required very early starts indeed!). Eventually you become accustomed to the early starts and frequent travelling, as a junior in particular it very much comes with the territory. Fortunately by the time you’re a tenant, most of your friends are forgiving when you have to cancel social plans at the last minute due to a late brief, overrunning trial preparation or simply fatigue!

My civil work consists predominantly of personal injury and contractual disputes though I have also been instructed in employment, costs and partnership disputes. I spend more days in court than doing paperwork, although my paperwork has steadily increased throughout the year. In court, fast track trials, lasting anywhere between 2 hours and a day, are probably the most challenging court work that I do. As these are trials, usually on liability and quantum, everything depends on the quality of evidence given by your witnesses and the effectiveness of your cross-examination. The fact that the matter has not settled usually means that your lay client expects to win. If your client loses, he has to pay the other side’s costs and potentially damages (where you’re representing the defendant or there’s a counterclaim). There can therefore be a good deal of pressure. Nevertheless these trials are a great experience and can ensure future instructions when you’re successful. Small claims trials are similar but involve smaller amounts of money, no formal rules of evidence and no costs regime (and therefore less litigation risk); they rarely last for more than one hour. Applications and case management conferences (CMCs) in multi track cases make up the remainder of my civil practice. Applications vary from an application for pre-action disclosure in a clear-cut case which can take around 15 minutes, to a fully contested hearing involving legal and factual argument such as an application for summary judgment, which can last anything up to three hours. Increasingly hearings, particularly CMCs and directions hearings, are conducted by telephone, meaning that you can conduct the hearing in Chambers and as soon as it is over you are at your desk able to work on other matters. The paperwork element of my civil practice includes advising on liability and quantum and drafting pleadings.

Crown Court trials constitute a very significant portion of Chambers’ work. As a junior you will often cover pre-trial hearings in cases belonging to your more senior colleagues. The types of hearings I have tended to cover are preliminary hearings, plea and case management hearings, mentions, applications to extend custody time limits and confiscation hearings. Criminal briefs for such hearings are generally allocated quite late in the day and therefore can be the cause of a late night. Although the hearing may only last five minutes, you need to have a sufficient grasp of your papers to deal with any issue that may arise; therefore the whole brief needs to be read and digested. In my (albeit modest) experience, criminal hearings are rarely predictable. The types of criminal cases in which I am instructed, as opposed to those matters where I am covering for other members, are sentences in the Crown Court and trials in the Magistrates. I conducted my first jury trial approximately nine months into my tenancy which was, in equal measures, both terribly daunting and terribly exciting.