An Interview with Joel Semakula, Landmark Chambers

NB: Joel, tell me when you began your tenancy?

JS: In 2020. I have been a tenant for almost a year.

NB: Which areas of law have you practised in since you began your tenancy?

JS: It is quite varied.

They are a fantastic organisation and I have already had success with one judicial review claim to limit activity on a motocross site partly on environmental law grounds. That was my first solo judicial review and I am glad it went well. That is one example of the kind of environmental law work we do.

There have also been a number of other times where I have produced an Advice in the environmental law space where I have to tell the client there is really nothing we can do. I have to say that we just do not have the statutory regime or the common law support that I think you were expecting. It is difficult to use the law to enforce environmental stand­ards against individuals. In those circumstances, the answer is often that you have to look for different tools that may help you to achieve the same or similar goals.

With big changes such as the pending Environmental Law Bill, I am excited about the opportunities in this area of law and do think the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003111597-5 future is bright for people who seek to use the law to protect the envi­ronment and enforce their rights. I am excited to see how that develops, am hoping to write more and become a leader in this field.

NB: What has become clear to me with my interviews is that it is dif­ficult to summarise in two or three words what a barrister’s practice area is these days.

JS: I think it depends on the set. The juniors at some Chambers very clearly do one area of work, e.g. property. I happen to be at a set that is really committed to having broader areas of work, and at the junior end most of us do everything. Some people have come in probably within a year or two drop one of our key three areas, but I really enjoy all of them and see myself trying to stick with as many of them for as long as I can. I imagine if you ask me this question four years from now, I may only have two left!

NB: Are these the sort of practice areas where you wanted to work, or has it changed as you have gone through your legal training?

JS: I think as a student barrister initially I was quite committed to a commercial practice and that was partly driven by having enjoyed contract law at university and partly by my understanding of it coming from a background in finance. As I began exploring the profession and exploring different sets, I was also drawn to Chambers that did prop­erty work. This was why I ended up applying to Landmark for their spe­cialist property pupillage and also to other property sets. I was attracted to the opportunity at Landmark to do property work, in addition to the chance to explore public law, which was an area that I had always been interested in.

The other big thing is planning, which I probably spend about a third of my practice doing. However, very few students know what a plan­ning practice is like and do not have much exposure to it either at law school or at Bar School or even in mini pupillages. I would say that plan­ning is an area that I truly discovered during pupillage and is now an area that I really enjoy. I think it is going to be part of my practice for a very long time. I particularly love the opportunity to do environmental work that flows from a planning practice.

NB: How would you describe the split in those areas that you have described?

JS: I would say I am about 40% property, 40% planning and about 20% public.

NB: Can you give me some examples of the types of cases that you are instructed in right now?

JS: On the public law side of things, I have been instructed for about eight months now by NHS Blood & Transplant Service, which is one of the core participants in the ongoing Infected Blood Inquiry. That will be on for potentially another year and takes about one day a week out of my practice.

On the property side, I am in the process of writing an Advice in a co-ownership dispute between a mother and daughter. I am advising the daughter. The pair bought property together, however, the relation­ship has subsequently broken down and the question is who owns what percentage of the property. Many of us will remember this from law school where the parties are often husband and wife and following the breakdown of the relationship, there are many cases about what share of the property the wife gets. I have also spent a lot of last week, this week and likely next week doing possession cases.

So I usually spend about two days a week acting for landlords in these hearings as they seek to secure possession of, mainly, residential properties.

I also recently completed my first planning inquiry where I was acting for a residents group that was resisting a development for the building of 30 homes including 26 affordable homes on green belt land. So that is the kind of a mix of what has been keeping me busy.

NB: Is the Infected Blood Inquiry, or IBI, a statutory inquiry?

JS: Yes, it is. Much like the well-known Grenfell Inquiry launched in response to that tragedy. The IBI came from a scandal in the 1970s and 1980s in which many people were transfused with contaminated blood which led to them being infected with diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis C. There has been a huge campaign to properly investigate what happened with the hope of ensuring it never happens again.

NB: You have already talked about writing Advices as a regular fea­ture of your work. What about other things that more students will be studying? My students this year are just starting on their induction week today, they will study drafting and advocacy; do you engage in those activities regularly?

JS: If I have a think about the three of four tasks that I do most regu­larly as a junior barrister - they are drafting pleadings, writing Advices and preparing for the advocacy involved in short hearings. Possession hearings for example take 15 or 20 minutes in the courtroom but the prep time can be much longer than that. The one I am attending tomor­row probably took me four hours today to prepare. The final thing is I would say is that Advice means usually advising in writing and advising in conference. There are some other smaller tasks that make up part of what I do including writing pre-action letters and reviewing submissions for approval.

I have also done a couple of investigations where I have been instructed by a local authority, which has received a corporate complaint from a member of the public. I act as the independent investigator for them on such complaints where there is a planning issue.

I had a conversation with my clerk some time back where I said I want more cross-examination experience. I would say, in the second six months of my first year, I have actually had the chance to do a lot more of it. I think cross-examination is a very different skill to everything else we really do as barristers, and it takes years to become truly excellent at it.

NB: What sort of cases or hearings have led you to be cross-examining? JS: The most recent one was my planning inquiry which involved cross­examining two planning experts. It was a little bit of a nerve-wracking experience to begin with but examining an expert really tests your skills.

There is rarely any cross-examination in possession proceedings. It usually just involves consideration of an application for an order. The landlord has to satisfy the judge that he has fulfilled all the criteria in order to be entitled to that order.

NB: If we look at the sorts of people or organisations who have typi­cally been your clients next; we have already talked about the Infected Blood Inquiry. You mentioned also in possession hearings, you are act­ing mainly for landlords?

JS: Yes, I mainly act for landlords. I have acted a few times on a pro bono basis for defendant tenants, where I have taken instructions from the pro bono charity Advocate. In the planning world, I often act for local authorities, individuals or residents’ groups. At my level, it is less likely that I will act for a developer on my own without being led.

NB: What has your case load been compared with your second six months’ pupillage?

JS: It’s funny because unlike my colleagues at the criminal bar, I did not have a fully practising second six. What I mean by that is that my criminal barrister friends began to take on a pretty full caseload of their own from the outset. Whereas in my areas of work, I was taking on fewer cases and still being closely supervised. My caseload in prac­tice now is significantly greater because I was not actually on my feet very much in my second six and that is just the nature of pupillage at Landmark.

NB: What percentage of your time would you say you have been spend­ing in court or other tribunal-type settings compared with working at your desk, and which courts and tribunals do you attend?

JS: I would say approximately two days a week and I am happy with that. Much of the bread-and-butter work of most junior civil lawyers takes place in the County Courts.

NB: What parts of your practice would you say you find the most inter­esting and what areas do some people maybe find less exciting?

JS: My favourite part of this job is the advocacy. What I particularly like about the property and planning work I have been doing is the amount of advocacy experience I am getting. The reality is the public law work that I do is the stuff that is much more likely to end up in the news so things like assisting in the Shamima Begum case or working on the Covid ‘A’ levels results scandal. That kind of public interest work is unlikely to have me doing the advocacy before a judge (I’m just too jun­ior) but it’s probably the sort of work that people are much more likely to hear about in the media. That has a different kind of appeal and those cases are very interesting as well.

What do people find less exciting? Some people find too much written work probably a little bit less exciting. In the context of being a pupil in Covid, and then a first-year tenant in Covid, there wasn’t much court work and so nobody was really getting into court. I did a lot of paper­work in my second six and also probably a lot more than I do now in the first half of my year in tenancy. Now we are seeing the courts beginning to work through their backlogs and I am in court all the time. I like a nice mix, but I think if my practice were 100% paperwork or 100% sit­ting behind somebody in court, that would be quite a different job that what I thought I had signed up for.

NB: It’s the variety, isn’t it? That is what I like about the Bar - going to different places, seeing different people, and it’s different sorts of things that you do.

JS: The unpredictability! On the one hand, it’s great; on the other hand, sometimes it is not your best friend!

NB: You have talked about being led already but just wondering what sort of tasks did being led involve you doing?

JS: I have been led a few times. I can think of two cases that have been the most substantive. One of them was a planning judicial review where we were acting for the claimant. I did the first draft of the claim which was quite substantial. The hope was we were going to get to file that in court but unfortunately (although fortunate for my client), the local authority settled and so the case was resolved by a consent order.

I had a much more longer-term opportunity of being led where I was working on an examination in proceedings for a development consent order. Historically, when you had a large infrastructure project, the developer would need to get planning permission in each local authority through which the project passed. In order to avoid that and in light of how long it took to get permission for the fifth terminal at Heathrow, the government introduced development consent orders. So now the process is akin to a big planning inquiry that allows the developer to get all of the required permissions via this one process. These are pretty big projects.

I was actually led by my former supervisor, Richard Turney, and we were acting for the highways authority and local transport authority in the Development Consent Order (DCO) process for the AQUIND Interconnector Project, which is a new subsea and underground high- voltage direct current electric power transmission link between the south coast of England and Normandy in France.

NB: What did you do in that DCO?

JS: The biggest things we did there were advising the client on the appropriate response to specific parts of drafting in the DCO and giving legal advice on highways and compulsory acquisition issues. I also depu­tised for my leader when he was not able to attend the actual examina­tion and made submissions before the Examining Authority. That was a first and I enjoyed it. I am hoping to be led a bit more over the next year. I think it is a tough mix. I love my solo practice - I love the control that you get of running your own cases - but I am a big believer that being led is such a key part to your development as a junior barrister.

NB: I agree because at the very least, you get to be involved in cases that are more immense than ones you might be instructed in, in your own right.

JS: Yes. Also, it is tough to get feedback in this job because we spend so much time working by ourselves. Often the only feedback you get is not being instructed again. The type of feedback that would be most useful would be somebody showing you if there is a better way to do something. So just working closely with somebody who has been in this game a little bit longer than you means that you get that feedback. In my view, one year into a job it is really important to still be learning in that way. I expect that will remain the case for a long time.

NB: I think it is the worst barristers who never think that way. They think that their way is the only way, and they never advance in terms of their personal presentation or abilities. Can you tell me whether your time in practice so far has matched or been different from expectations that you had when you were back on the Bar course. Did Bar School prepare you for what your practice is now becoming?

JS: I am not sure Bar School could have prepared me for the amount of remote hearings I have done this early into my practice. Nobody knew what that was going to be like. Let us take the example of cross-exam­ination. It is tough to compare the way we were taught to do it at Bar School with how you do it over a computer where you have got your client WhatsApping you on one screen, you are trying to take a note of the cross-examination for your closing speech on another screen while listening to the answer that you are receiving, thinking about the next question that you need to ask and then trying to make sure you get eve­rything that you need for your closing speech!

You just have a lot more going on than you did in Bar School. At the same time, you have a number of cases you are taking on, and it’s surprising how quickly you have to shift focus. You start working on something at 9am, but by 10am you are getting phone calls about one of your other cases. There are those constant shifts. I am not sure how Bar School can prepare you for that. That’s one of the things that is so different about life in practice from pupillage and from Bar School.

I think the thing that Bar School prepares you quite well for are things like client management and understanding what the ethics are, even though I think what you experience in practice can often be quite difficult to predict. Often if you are very junior, you are against litigants in person and we are constantly asking ourselves, do I need to inform the court of this potential argument against me, or do I need to raise that particular issue?

NB: Were there any subject areas that you studied at university or at Bar School which, when you were starting out in your practice, you thought, I am glad I took that because that’s really helped me?

JS: Yes, I studied judicial review which was great. I am glad I did judi­cial review because just procedurally, it’s very different studying admin­istrative law whilst learning practically how to prepare and argue a judicial review claim. It’s just so important to what I do now.

NB: What are the most difficult changes that you have got used to as you have settled into your practice?

JS: I would say the first thing is, and I have spoken about this on Twitter a little bit, that it is rare that whatever I think I am going to achieve when I start work at 9am on a Monday is achieved by 5pm that day. This is just because of the number of cases you run as a very junior person at the Bar. It is a reflection of the unpredictability of what could happen on something that you are already instructed on. That can often be a difficult change.

Also diary management can be quite tough. There are a lot of moving parts to managing your diary: from understanding when you do actu­ally have room to take on another case to staying on top of the number of people that have demands on your time. There is the perpetual chal­lenge of things taking much longer than you quoted because you are seeing them for the first time. All of that comes into managing your diary and obviously you get assistance with that at the Bar and from your clerks, but for me that is still a big learning point. Sometimes, it does not go well. Miracles happen: a case falls out sometimes and you think, I’m glad that has gone because I do not know how this was all going to get done.

NB: When you are working on your papers, do you tend to do it at home or in Chambers?

JS: I am probably at home two days a week and then three days a week in Chambers. Ideally for me as someone starting out, I want to be in Chambers three to four days a week.

NB: Do you have your own room in Chambers?

JS: No, I share with a colleague who also does property law who is about five years senior to me and that is fantastic. It is great to have her as a roommate especially in my first year. I would highly recommend that to everyone.

NB: How techy are your practice areas leading into issues about whether the job is more paper-based or more digital? Is it ring binders or is it hard drives?

JS: I made a decision quite early on as a pupil that I was going to make myself a techy barrister so I do everything I can to be paperless. It doesn’t always work for two reasons - sometimes I get sent documents via email in a disorganised way that means it is not very efficient or easy for me to work on a screen. In those circumstances, I have to print things off.

The other thing I have found since we have gone back to court is that judges are not always as techy as you might want them to, and what I mean by that is that it is often the system to blame. You can’t always be sure that if your instructing solicitors send the bundle to the court, it will be there when you arrive. You take a big risk not arriving with a printed bundle! It seems to me it does slightly defeat the purpose of being paperless if I still have to print a bundle and give it to the judge. Right now, that is something for me that is truly holding us back as a profession. I would rather just show up to the court with my laptop and an iPad. At the moment, I am perfectly happy to be 100% paperless but for all these reasons, I am finding it a bit more of a challenge.

NB: Are the fields of law that you work in sociable and collegiate or is it very solitary?

JS: It is a good question. I would say Chambers is very sociable and collegiate. When you are working in all of these areas, you tend to be working on your own unless you are being led. So, I think there is a lot of time spent working alone at a desk. The way that you get around that is by being in Chambers, sharing a room, that kind of stuff. I am a big extrovert and not very good in my own company. This is why the solitary nature of our job continues to be something that I find challeng­ing. This was of course much worse during pupillage at the start of the pandemic.

NB: What are your typical hours of work? How are you able to organ­ise it?

JS: I tend to start around 8.45am and I try and get off around 6.30pm∕7pm. I avoid most weekends, it’s usually the odd one.

NB: Is there a lot of travelling for you?

JS: I was a remote barrister for a lot of my first year in practice but over the last three months, if I am in court, I am probably travelling about two days a week. So yesterday, I was in Slough, today I was in Uxbridge. Tomorrow, I think I am in Central London.

NB: So, everything within reach as it were?

JS: To an extent. I had a case in Sleaford and another one in Birmingham, the day before that. Every day, I look at my diary and think where am I going tomorrow?

NB: Did you have any expectations about the travelling before you started at the Bar or did you always know?

JS: I always understood that life as a junior civil barrister is spent tra­versing the County Courts of England and Wales. I expected that, but then Covid hit and I spent all of my time doing all my hearings remotely so it didn’t matter where the court was based. Now, all of a sudden, I am moving around. I am slowly getting more and more used to it.

NB: Tell me about wellbeing, because the Bar Council says that it is very big on wellbeing but certainly it never always was like that. When I was called in 1994, wellbeing was not even a word, I don’t think. How is the work-life balance for you?

JS: I used to be an investment banker so I know how bad it can get when it comes to lack of work-life balance. Probably that is why I think my work-life balance at the Bar is brilliant. I think part of that is led by our clerks. I happen to be in a set where the clerks are really good about helping you maintain some balance. They are really reasonable, and there is not a ton of pressure to absolutely kill yourself from the junior end. When you’re practising, I think you have got to be aware of that. We all work very hard, but nobody looks at me like I’m crazy for leaving the office at 7pm. For me, that is pretty balanced.

I perform comedy on the side, and work doesn’t really get in the way of that or my ability to spend time with people I love. Naturally, that’s not true all the time because sometimes if I haven’t managed my diary as effectively as I could, those hours do get worse. However, it hasn’t happened enough for me that it’s a problem.

I was on holiday over the summer and unfortunately partly because of an issue that arose on a case that I had already been instructed on, that did mean that I had to work for half of that holiday which is not ideal. I now understand a way to prevent something like that from happening again in the future. Generally, I think the work-life balance, at least in the areas that I do, is okay. I do not envy my colleagues at the criminal bar. I hear their stories of being in court five days a week, getting papers at half past five the night before. That kind of stuff doesn’t really happen in my practice areas, which is key to maintaining that balance.

This also comes from, I have to say, a background where I used to do a job that involved getting to work at 10am, four days a week, and leaving for home between 1am and 4am in the morning. So, I am really against working in the evenings. I cannot stand it. I understand others do, but I did that for two years where I worked basically every weekend, 90 to 100 hours a week for two years. I am just not willing to live like that anymore.

NB: Our next topic is diversity which is whether you have any experi­ences or observations about diversity in the Bar? We are keen to know all our interviewees’ experiences of things like sex equality, race equal­ity, social mobility in particular and any other areas that our interview­ees consider touch on that broad topic of diversity at the Bar.

JS: I tweeted yesterday about an experience that I had for the first time ever at the Bar. In all the years that I have been a mini pupil shadowing barristers and having spent a year as a judicial assistant at the Court of Appeal, yesterday was the first time that I have ever been in a court­room where both the advocate and the judge are black men. I was the advocate. That was a unique experience and goes to the wider point of being a black man in civil law, particularly in areas like property, plan­ning and commercial law. I am very used to being one of the few black men in the room, often the only one. That is my general experience of diversity in the areas of law in which I practise. I am vocal about how I think that needs to change. I spent a lot of time working with students and barristers particularly from these groups trying to see what we can do to change that.

In terms of social mobility, this is also an area that I am really inter­ested in. It comes from own background. I am working class, state educated, grew up in an overcrowded council flat in the East End of London. I made it from there to these areas of the Bar. I think that is also really important. It is important also that the clients we work with, in particular in the property and public side of the work that I do, that people have experiences of all different types of barristers when they encounter the legal system. They potentially might encounter someone who has a better understanding of their background or their circum­stances. I am clear that I think the Bar needs to do better on these issues. Personally, I am most interested in racial equality and social mobility. I think things are getting better but I think it was telling that in all the time I have spent trying to become a barrister and then practising as one, yesterday was the first time I had ever had that kind of experience. It really impacted me.

NB: What would you say is the sort of income progression in the areas that you work in?

JS: Property and planning are higher paid areas of the Bar than public law. However, public law practitioners also do well in my Chambers. I always say to students that the best gauge you can get of what type or what you might expect your earnings to be like in your first year, is to look at the pupillage award. Generally, with the civil sets, first year tenants make more in that first year than whatever the pupillage award was, and my guess is that it is usually around 15% to 20% more.

In terms of progression, your income does climb quite quickly in the earlier years but it will plateau. Generally, if you get yourself in a good set with high-quality work, I think you can feel confident about good solid income progression. The three areas in which I practise most defi­nitely have good progression.

NB: What thoughts do you have about the future of the Bar in the areas where you work?

JS: We can go back to diversity. The Bar, for years, has said it is embrac­ing diversity and has a number of initiatives and programmes in place to really change the face of the Bar. This is about both recruitment and retention. I am very hopeful that the Bar is becoming a more diverse place and taking this issue seriously. My hope is that we are then going to see that really rising through the ranks of the profession. To me, suc­cess looks like greater diversity in those securing pupillage and tenancy, becoming silks and making it to the judiciary.

NB: Are we succeeding with that?

JS: The big issue is - regardless of all of these diversity and mentoring programmes - you are still seeing black candidates, even with the same grades as their white counterparts, failing to get pupillage at anywhere near the same rate.

There are other groups for which this is an issue, e.g. disabled candi­dates. The Bar really has got to take a look at this. None of this work matters if at the end of the day, diverse candidates do not get spots in Chambers. If they are not actually earning fees, doing cases, then all of these additional programmes really do just look like lip service. So my hope for the future is that we actually end up with tangible outcomes.

When it comes to the future for my practice, an area that is really inter­esting in the work we do at Landmark is environmental law. Personally, I am really excited to be at a Chambers that I think could lead the way as to how this area of practice develops. There are a lot of excit­ing things going on in this country with the new Environmental Bill, COP26 coming up and the new Office for Environmental Protection. I think this is a fantastic opportunity for junior practitioners and aspiring barristers to lead and also it is another way in which we as lawyers can make a difference.

Those are two quite different thoughts on the future but that is where I am.

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