An Interview with Tony Williams, Central Chambers, Manchester

NB: When did you begin tenancy, Tony?

TW: I started tenancy in April 2019, so I was first on my feet October 2018 for my second six. My practice has been 99% crime.

NB: What’s the other 1%?

TW: Other little bits and bats.

NB: Did you always want to practise in crime?

TW: Actually no. As a child, I wanted to be a doctor. When I started my A-levels, I chose five with the plan of dropping one and proceeding with four. I chose chemistry, biology, history, German and law. I just thought I would take law out of curiosity but within two weeks, I dropped biol­ogy because I decided I didn’t want to be a doctor anymore. I just fell in love with law. That is when the great revelation came for me.

NB: Was the revelation that it was crime that you wanted to practise in?

TW: That probably also came during my A-levels. The way my A-level was taught included some equity and tort law, but then my tutor chose to use the second year to focus on the criminal law and police powers. So, I think that is when it was ingrained in me.

I am interested in every single area of law I look at; I think it’s all fascinating. I even went to commercial law lectures at university with no intention of sitting the exam just because I was interested and wanted to learn. But, when it came to crime, I think it’s just the principles behind it that appeal more to me. I know it’s a massive over-simplification to say that commercial law is mostly just about money changing hands but from prior experience that can be how it feels.

NB: I understand that because when I was at university, in the first year we studied a module, I think it was called ‘constitutional law and the individual and the state’. The professor leading that was called Keith Ewing.

TW: He has written a book!

NB: He has. I think he’s written a few. Just before I began at university he published a book dealing with the individual and the state, it was called Freedom under Thatcher. It was an excellent book. Everybody bought it, of course. It influenced me, I think, in where I went with my practice.

TW: I think public law goes hand-in-hand with crime. When defending in crime you’re defending an individual against the state. When it comes to large judicial review or administrative law, you are bringing the state to court. You are bringing them to account (which meant a lot more ten years ago when I was doing my law degree than it does now). But they are two sides of the same coin, I feel.

NB: It’s mainly defence work that you do?

TW: If you look at the total number of trials I have done, you could probably say I’ve done more prosecuting. Recently, this year, I have done more defending, though I’ve done plenty of prosecution lists in the Magistrates’ Courts. I do like defending and I do enjoy having the client there as a personification of who I’m representing rather than just the state generally. I’d say that at the moment its maybe 60% prosecut­ing and 40% defending. That’s probably just because at my level, I have been instructed in a few Crown Court cases but I have not yet done a Crown Court trial. I have applied to become a level 2 prosecutor which is when you start to get more trial work.

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

TW: When I was preparing for this interview, I was due to attend a hearing in relation to a client who is accused of harassing someone and causing fear of violence and witness intimidation. I have got a bur­glary on-going and I’ve also got an attempted s.18 wounding where the defendant is alleged to have used a car as a weapon. That one’s due for trial next year.

I have just finished writing a case summary on a case alleging con­spiracy to supply Class A & B drugs. There are four conspirators; three of them have pleaded guilty. My client is the only one who is having a trial.

I am also being led by Ben Knight of my Chambers representing a cli­ent accused of being involved in a conspiracy to import Class A drugs. That’s my first led case as well involving between 15 and 20 defendants in total.

NB: If we think about those cases that are on-going, can you tell me about the sorts of tasks have you had to do, because advising, drafting and advocacy are the skills that Bar students learn?

TW: Yes. I have not done as much advocacy in those ones that aren’t for trial yet. I have just done a few mention hearings here and there, which would typically be shortish hearings addressing trial readiness or whether the prosecution had properly carried out their disclosure tasks.

I’ve drafted legal arguments which include written advocacy and drafting in one, for example I’ve responded to notices of intention to adduce bad character by drafting applications to exclude, and I have responded to hearsay notices.

It is sometimes overlooked that you have to think a bit like a litigator as well as an advocate. You’re thinking ‘I want my solicitor to send this e-mail for me’. Obviously, I can’t be engaging in correspondence on their behalf so if I just type this particular part of the e-mail to my solicitors in a certain way, I know they will be able to adapt it into any litigation correspondence because you know the solicitor is just too busy at the minute to get everything done.

NB: And those cases that you are doing right now, Tony, are they typi­cal of your practice so far?

TW: I wouldn’t necessarily say so, but it does look like my practice is developing at the moment. I have done other jobs before coming to the Bar, but at the Bar itself I’m still quite junior. I am finding myself doing more defence work than I did during my pupillage when I had about an 80/20 prosecution/defence split and I’m seeing more in the Crown Court now than I used to. That change is just down to my practice developing. It is also due to the fact that the police and CPS weren’t charging low-level offences for a while, so you wouldn’t see many bur­glaries for a good couple of years. It seems that it’s only just about now that they have started remembering that offences like s.47 assault and burglary exist. Now that they have, some of the work is coming my way.

NB: What sorts of people or organisations have largely been your clients?

TW: When prosecuting, obviously, the main client is the Crown Prosecution Service, but when defending, particularly legal aid work, it is unfortunately mostly unemployed or very much working-class indi­viduals. As I see it, that’s just the unfortunate impact of government policy. It’s the worst off in society that are more likely to be implicated in criminal cases.

NB: I’m interested in what your case load has been like and how it’s compared with your second six months’ pupillage.

TW: In your second six in crime, there is an impetus to get you on your feet and make sure that you’re in court as much as possible, both to develop your skills and to make sure you are seen by potential instruct­ing solicitors and opponents. I was on my feet nearly every day during my second six. Since my second six, I am still quite busy because if you’re not in court you’re not getting paid. As my Crown Court practice has developed, I can justify more days working on cases at home prep­ping, because I know that I will end up getting paid for that work later down the line. So, I would say, probably on average, I’m in court four or five days a week. Now and again, I will take a day off just to do some personal admin like accounting, but there is no point in me taking too many ‘paper days’ because otherwise, I won’t be getting paid.

NB: You’ve also begun to talk there about how much time is spent at court and at your desk.

TW: More often than not, it is a full five days a week in court. A few weeks here and there it will be just three or four days. There are times where the work just doesn’t come in and I might have a few days off in the week which I can use to catch up on other things, but most of the time I’m available and I will let my clerks know I’m available. If some­thing comes in, they will give me a call.

There are other projects going on with Chambers as well. We run a legal advice clinic that is mainly for LGBTQ+ clients. I’m involved with that - my colleagues will sometimes approach me and say here’s a client who wants some free initial advice with a view to us taking their case on through certain routes. We might take it on through direct access or we might forward them on to solicitors who may instruct us.

NB: What sort of courts or other tribunals do you attend, Tony, and are they always wig and gown jobs?

TW: Mainly the Magistrates’ and the Crown Court. Magistrates’ obviously, no wig and gown. Crown Courts, in person, mostly wig and gown. Obviously, we live in strange times so some courts are either not doing the whole wig and gown shebang or are simply not letting people turn up. In one court I go to, the Recorder is not happy seeing people in wigs and gowns at the moment because I think he sees them as carriers of Covid. To be fair, the Crown Court is the only venue that I go to where they do wig and gowns these days. Anything in terms of social security tribunals, you don’t see wigs and gowns because they are very informal. Small Claims Court, again, very informal. I also had to wear a wig and gown when I was instructed to defend a com­mittal application in the County Court once when the client was at risk of custody.

NB: I have been wearing black three-piece suits for 20 years, Tony, and now I’ve started at the university. For the first time, I wear brown shoes. I don’t think I’ve ever worn brown shoes in my life. Also separate jacket and trousers with no waistcoat. It was really weird to begin with!

TW: So what are you doing at the university then if you don’t mind me asking?

NB: The University of Law started with the Bar Practice Course in Manchester. They have other campuses across the country that have taught it for a long time, but they have just started in Manchester. I actually saw an advert for visiting tutors where you go along a couple of evenings or month or something. I applied for that before lockdown, a lot then happened so the interview for that was delayed and then when I eventually had the interview, I’d almost forgotten I’d applied. They said to me, did you know we have got a perma­nent position available? So, here I am. I am teaching criminal litiga­tion, evidence and sentencing, and skills. I did think to myself that I might get a bit worn down by teaching the same class three times, but because the student engagement is so different each time, it is always fresh - and fun.

TW: I suppose the good thing is seeing people taking it all in and seeing them engage in the learning process that we did a long time ago.

NB: A very long time ago in my case! Can we turn to the parts of prac­tice that you find the most interesting and areas that some people may find less exciting?

TW: I enjoy the legal argument and actually conducting trials. It’s nice when you get to court and you know this is definitely going to happen as a trial; there is no way this client is going to change their mind on the day and plead guilty. It’s also nice when you can get to court and you know that the whole case comes down to an argument about the law as opposed to being about the facts and whether or not the court believes your client. Getting your teeth stuck into the legal research, refining your legal arguments and then thinking about how you are going to put that into the mind of the tribunal - that’s probably the most fun part for me. Witness-handling is also an enjoyable and challenging part of the trial process. It is great when you make a fantastic point in cross-examination. It doesn’t feel as dramatic as it does on TV, but in many ways it’s better because witnesses don’t necessarily realise how you’ve undermined their evidence until it’s too late.

I suppose one of the more interesting parts of being an advocate is when you have got a challenging plea-in-mitigation where you know it’s a borderline case - when it’s not just a question of how long your client spends in prison, but where there is a possibility that they could avoid prison. You know that your advocacy can make a difference! Those are the times when I find the job most exciting because I know that what I’m doing can make a difference and, touch wood, more often than not it has.

As for what people find less exciting? I think there’s a perception that road traffic cases can be quite boring. Some are of the view that they just involve affluent clients demanding a particular result. If you have got a road traffic trial, that can be quite interesting because it can often come down to the law, but it’s not uncommon for me to attend court and find that I have to advise a client that despite what they may have paid and what they’ve been advised previously, they do not have a run­nable defence and they are better off pleading guilty then and there to get the best outcome.

It’s not like being an MP where you are campaigning for years and eventually a law gets passed that is the result of what you have been campaigning for which might, eventually, make a difference to some­one’s life. It’s here and now. My words can mean that this person in court today doesn’t go to prison. Sometimes that’s the best part of the job - not necessarily winning trials, as people may think, but making a huge difference in somebody’s life by getting them the right sentence after they’ve pleaded or been found guilty. It’s stopping somebody’s life from getting completely ruined by going somewhere they don’t need to go. In many ways, a plea-in-mitigation is the stage at which true advo­cacy skills come out.

NB: The next question is about being led and what it involved you doing?

TW: In one case I’ve got Ben Knight, the head of our Chambers’ crimi­nal team, as my leader. It’s a drugs importation case. I have conducted a lot of legal research. There is an international dimension to this case as well. This has been helpful for my application to the CPS to be a level 2 prosecutor, as well. A lot of my paper days have been working on this case just sitting down and carrying out a full case analysis. I am reducing the case down so that Ben can look at the reduced version and form his views as leading counsel. It’s also involved, on some occa­sions, taking the lead in conferences. I also sit in on mentions where Ben can’t make it because of his own busy practice. I am doing a lot of the legwork at the moment and he’s using his experience to make the big decisions. That’s a good thing because this is quite serious stuff and I’m still learning a lot from this case and from him that I can then use in my own practice.

NB: Interesting that you talk about case analysis because that is what the university recommend to students in every single case. In the students’

foundation week, there is a long session simply on case analysis bring­ing home to students that the examination and cross-examination, for example, must be done properly, and is all well and good - but under­standing the case thoroughly through careful case analysis, that is king.

TW: Case analysis is a valuable skill and to this day, I still do it fully and properly. As soon as I get instructed in a Crown Court case, usually the day before the plea and trial preparation hearing, I will sit down and complete a full case analysis which includes a whole ‘good fact, bad fact’ table. Usually, I’ve got 60% of my closing speech in my head before I have my first conference with my client and then, as we go along, I will perfect it, and then I will commit it to paper closer to the trial. But I don’t think you can have a full handle on the case and on the arguments that you want to make unless you do that full case analysis at the start. There are some people who will say that nine times out of ten you won’t get time to do that. I say, make the time to do it because that’s the way you are going to give the client the best advice on the first occasion.

NB: I agree, and also you actually save time in the long run because your understanding of the case is so complete.

TW: Absolutely. I use a template for my case analysis with every brief. If I fill that in on day one and then I go off and do something else for a few months, I can come back to the case analysis and just scroll through quickly and remind myself what the case is about.

NB: Can I ask about the extent to which your practice is matching or differing from expectations that you had at the start?

TW: When you are studying law at university, given the academic side of things, you think that legal principles are very interesting. You can also think that so many cases are going to come down to a niche legal point - has this person technically broken the law by their actions? In reality, most cases involve everybody understanding and agreeing what the law says and the case is really about ‘did this thing happen or not?’ That is one area where true advocacy comes into play in the form of witness-handling. There is probably more of an emphasis on witness­handling in criminal practice than there is in actually knowing what the law says.

Having said that, I have had a lot of cases that did come down to niche legal points. My very first Crown Court brief was a case where my client was someone who was 18, so he’d only just stopped being a youth at the time of the offence. He also suffered from poor mental health. He was charged with a public order offence and having a bladed article in a public place. The incident involved him essentially threatening his mother then getting a knife from the kitchen knife block, causing his mother and sister to run out of the property into the street. He chased them outside and waved a knife around screaming words to the effect of, ‘I’m going to kill someone and then myself’. The very first thing I did (as I always do) was look at the law and at what elements the Crown has to prove and realised that my client had an obvious defence to the knife allegation - at no point did he leave the curtilage of the property so he could not be guilty because he didn’t have the knife in a public place. So I got the prosecution to drop that charge at the first Plea and Trial Preparation Hearing. So that was a case that did come down to a legal point because he almost certainly would have received a custodial sen­tence were it not for that. Thankfully, he ended up getting a community order to get help with his mental health problems instead.

In terms of answering the question, what were my expectations when I came to the Bar? I did expect a lot more legal arguments but I’m not disappointed by the amount of legal argument that I’ve had. By the time I came to the Bar, it was five years after I did the Bar course, I knew the reality was this was mostly going to be about witness-handling and trials and factual disputes. I think I still struggled with the idea that you don’t need to do hours and hours of legal research in every case. To begin with, I thought that if I didn’t make sure I knew every single authority about a basic assault, I’d be negligent. You can’t afford to do that level of legal research every night before every prosecution list when you’re preparing for five different trials. Learning not to overthink it and learning to think, well look, this trial comes down to whether he hit the guy or not - just proving that a certain set of events happened or didn’t happen. That’s probably the biggest difference between my expectation and the reality.

NB: I think what you are talking about there is the triumph of experi­ence and the development of instinct in a criminal lawyer which is something that only comes with time.

TW: Yes. I think that’s it. When you come to the Bar, you expect that you’re going to be doing these grand trials from day one and maybe even addressing a jury. I have not had my first Crown Court trial yet, and I know there are others who waited just as long to get their first Crown Court trial. I know there are juniors who may have prosecuted Crown Court trials during their pupillage but didn’t get their first defence trial for some years into their practice. That’s another thing that differed from my expectations. When experience comes into play, you will get a prosecution list at the Magistrates’ Court with five, six or seven trials in it. You learn not to overthink, but you also get a feel for recognising in advance those cases where there is no way they are realistically going to end up proceeding as a trial and those cases that are definitely going to be contested.

Suppose I can tell that the complainant isn’t going to turn up - I know I’m going to be asked to make an application to adduce hearsay evidence which is unlikely to succeed and then I’m going to have to offer no evidence. That enables me to focus on those cases which are almost definitely going to end up as trials. Experience gets you a feel for which cases are actually ‘runners’ and which ones aren’t so you can better manage your prep time.

NB: Tony, do you think that Bar School prepared you for what your practice is becoming?

TW: I think some of the basic skills that I learned in Bar School do help, but there’s a difference between passing the course and learning to be a good advocate. I think doing everything that the course expects you to do is one thing, but then learning when and how to deviate from that is where your experience and skills can come in. For example, they teach you never to ask a question to which you don’t the answer and never to ask a question to which you do not want the answer. As you develop experience, you will learn times where you know it’s safe to ask an open question in cross-examination because you know that whatever answer you get is not going to be harmful to your case.

One example in particular is a case I was prosecuting where this lad was accused of supplying Class A drugs in Piccadilly Gardens and there was some footage where you can follow his movements through the evening. He’s just approaching random people and he’s passing by some couples to get to others. He had drugs in his possession as a set of deals, and as he was giving his narrative he couldn’t seem to give the same explanation for his actions twice.

So I cross-examined by taking him through the footage again and ask­ing him, well look, you are approaching this second couple here, you said initially that’s because you wanted to borrow a cigarette off them. Well, you could have asked this first couple here couldn’t you? But you ignored them? So why have you skipped these two? He just couldn’t give the same answer twice. I was basically doing a second examination-in-chief with him because I knew he would not be able to give the same explanation twice. That in itself gave the impression to the tribunal that he was clearly not telling the truth and that he was making it up as he was going along.

But that’s experience; that’s not what you are expected to do straight out of Bar School. I do think it does give you the very basic tools that you need to be able to do the job but there is a level of reality that comes into it that no school could teach you. That’s not a criticism of the Bar course, it’s just a reflection of how a criminal pupillage shapes you. You will see reality for your first six months’ pupillage and then you will be sent off to do it on your own based on what you learnt throughout those six months. So, I don’t think that Bar School prepared me for what my practice is becoming. Rather, it gave me the tools I needed to progress, and the rest is experience.

NB: I completely agree with that. I see that Bar School gives you that badge of competence to begin your practice as a barrister. After that, the rest is up to you to keep on top of it, to learn from experience - start small, get bigger and keep up your Continuing Professional Development all the time.

TW: The Devil’s Advocate, a book by Iain Morley, was absolute gospel for me. I thought it was fantastic, particularly if you want to be a crimi­nal lawyer. It’s less about the theory of advocacy and more about the lit­eral basic stepping-stones. He writes the book in such a way that it’s easy to follow as well. I have not read it in a while but I remember every single principle in it. I read that after my Bar course. I passed my exams based on what I learned at the university, but I learned to hone my skills by what I’ve got through The Devil’s Advocate and what I’ve learned from Ben in Chambers as well. For example, The Devil’s Advocate taught me to write my closing speech, or 80% of it, before the case starts.

NB: That is also something I say to my students. If you are doing a proper case analysis as you should do, many advocates will have a closing speech mapped out which you tinker with as the case goes on because evidence takes you all sorts of places. It’s the best prepara­tion. Are there any subject areas at university or Bar School that as you started out you were glad you’d taken?

TW: Yes. University taught the ‘law of evidence’ module. At the time I didn’t quite understand why because I had not done a mini-pupillage until after my degree but now that I am where I am, yes I’m glad I studied the law of evidence because without understanding the rules of hearsay, bad character, understanding what a voir dire is, then you simply cannot do this job. Obviously, I am glad I took criminal law as a subject. I did law with criminal justice as well. I did criminology and a module in criminal justice in my first year and that was all to do with police powers and how the system works.

I did advanced criminal litigation on the bar course as well. That taught you the difference between understanding what criteria have to be met before someone is guilty of a criminal offence and thinking about what evidence might be missing which you would expect to see if they really were guilty. So when someone is accused of possession with intent to supply, you might find there are drugs in the car but there is no paraphernalia; there’s no scales or snap bags or anything like that to show that they are dealing it. It’s literally just a bag of drugs and that could be the difference between a conviction for possession and a con­viction for possession with intent to supply.

NB: You studied evidence at university?

TW: Yes. I did criminal litigation, evidence and sentencing in Bar School but beforehand I studied the law of evidence during my degree. I had decided quite early on I wanted to be a barrister because I wanted to be the man in court saying things rather than the one doing the litigation behind the scenes. My tutors at the time said if you want to be a barris­ter, this module is what you need to do because there is going to be a lot of arguing about the law of evidence and when something is admissible and when something isn’t.

NB: Interesting to hear you say that because I chose to study evidence at university as my degree for exactly that reason. My tutor was an Australian called Peter Creighton, I found him inspirational. You do often come into contact with people who inspire you in the subjects that you are interested in, and it can be a real motivating factor for where your career begins and goes.

TW: Exactly and I’m sure in 10 or 20 years’ time, we will be getting a lot of barristers saying, I heard Mr. Booth talking about it!

NB: Ha! Well, we’ll see about that. What have been the most difficult changes that you have got used to while you have been working at the Bar?

TW: I think, for me, actually I learnt a different code of conduct to the one that junior barristers learn today. We used to have a set of rules; now you have got the core duties, conduct rules and outcomes to help you interpret them. I had to re-learn the code of conduct essentially. Broadly, the principles are exactly the same, thankfully. It’s just learning how to justify it and reference it.

It’s also a challenge remembering to keep on top of changes that affect my regular day-to-day practice. There was an amendment to the criminal practice direction in the Magistrates’ Courts regarding adjournments just as I was starting out that I had to get to grips with, so every time I had to make an application to adjourn, I had to learn to stop referring to a case called Picton which is no longer good law. There are some legal advisors, even in the Magistrates’ Court, who still don’t know that. I’m having to get on my feet and say, I hear your learned legal advisor’s just referred to the case of Picton, please note that is no longer good law. Please refer to this instead and I end up just e-mailing it to the court.

NB: As well as changes in the law, what about changes in respect of being self-employed?

TW: It was a huge change for me, really. I alluded earlier to my profes­sional background - after the Bar course in 2012, I worked for two years as a County Court advocate so that was all civil stuff like mort­gage repossession, debt recovery, small claims, personal injury stage 3 disposals and civil enforcement. Then I worked for Citizens Advice Bureau for 18 months as a debt advisor - again, mostly civil and housing but from the other side. I then worked at the General Medical Council for two years in regulatory law. I moved from being self-employed to being employed then back to being self-employed at the Bar. I had to adapt my facilities because I no longer had the support of an employer behind me when I became self-employed. I also didn’t have PAYE and things like that, so I had to have my own spreadsheets to keep my finances on track. I have had to organise my time to make sure that I do my own accounting, or rather do my own spreadsheets to send to my accountant. I’ve had to develop all these tools not just to help me do the actual lawyering, because I’ve got all these templates that I use for criminal practice, but I’ve also had to develop these templates for my own finances and record-keeping that are kind of ancillary to the job. I’ve got a spreadsheet for my income, I’ve got a spreadsheet for my expenses, I’ve got folders to keep all my digital receipts in. I’ve had to sort out my bank accounts to make sure I’ve got one that saves money aside for tax. That’s something a lot of people don’t realise when they get pupillage actually - when it comes to all the money you receive, you do need to save quite a large percentage of it for your first tax bill even though in pupillage you may not be paying Chambers’ rent.

NB: When you’re not in court, do you tend to work in Chambers or at home?

TW: I work at home. One of the ways in which my Chambers are keep­ing ahead of the game, as it were, is by having one small room for the clerks and a conference room for the barristers so we don’t have a whole building to ourselves like some other Chambers may have. We just don’t need it because we all work from home, we all work digitally.

NB: How techy is it working in crime these days?

TW: You need to be technologically aware not just to physically work on a laptop but also in order to understand a lot of cases that come about these days. There is an ever-increasing number of cases involving com­puters such as stalking, harassment, misuse of public communications/ social media, malicious communications, the downloading of indecent images and many more. An understanding of the technology involved really helps you get your head around the evidence to advise your client or prepare questions to prove or disprove the way in which the technol­ogy works, which could be crucial to winning the case.

I suppose in terms of how techy I’ve got to be to do my job, I’ve been working from a 2017 HP laptop until Friday last week where I finally had enough money from my practice to get myself a Surface Book 3. Before I got this, I would be getting to court and I’d be giving clients certain advice and I would have to physically handwrite an endorse­ment - to confirm, for example, that I have given you this advice, you don’t want to take it, you want to do this instead. Sign that to confirm that is your decision. That takes a good ten minutes - often that is time you just don’t have! Now I’ve got a Surface, I can give them the little platinum pen and I can go ‘right, I’ve typed out an endorsement for you, 30 seconds, sign there, done’. So that’s one side where technology makes things easier.

In terms of whether or not it’s essential, if you intend to prosecute I think it is. You need to be able to play footage at court. In court we use electronic evidence software such as Egress and Evidence.com. We need to be able to play body-worn footage, we need to be able to play CCTV. We need to be able to use a system called Clickshare so that we can project evidence onto the big screens in court for the judge and jury. We need to be familiar with the Crown Court’s digital case system and the Common Platform. I think there was a time where the profession was dominated by the more archaic barrister who didn’t need technology; whereas now, I think, if you’re not able to keep up with the times then you will struggle as a barrister.

NB: Very interesting because one thing I tell my students is that if they are technically able then as very brand-new barristers sometimes they will have the edge over more senior practitioners and will be more attractive to solicitors.

TW: I think so, yes. If everybody else is just randomly clicking things hoping it will work and you’re the one in court who knows how to talk people through their technical issues, you will be noticed. It can help from an advocacy point of view as well because if you have got an oppo­nent who’s struggling with the tech and you help them out, it gives you the ‘honest guide’ edge before the tribunal.

My pupil supervisor Ben has taught me quite a lot about the ‘honest guide’ approach to advocacy, impressing upon the tribunal that you’re not just there to win or to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes, but to be an honest guide to the court, helping them come to the correct decision. Maintaining that makes it easier to persuade a tribunal to your way of thinking. If you are able to help the court and your opponent with the technology at least, that helps to build your reputation as someone who is helpful to the court.

NB: How would you describe the extent to which your job is less paper-based and more digital - or are you still heavily dependent on ring binders and couriers?

TW: I was trained by a very tech-minded barrister to work paperlessly. When I turn up to court, I work almost exclusively from my laptop. It is handy to bring papers with you to court if you can, but on top of giving you a bad back from carrying it all, it’s just going to go in the shredder at the end of the day anyway so I try to avoid it.

The only times I would use paper are when I’m writing endorsements, which I now no longer need to do because of my new laptop, and when I am prosecuting and the prosecution give me a pack of papers at court full of witness statements to give to the witnesses to read from and refresh their memories. It can be handy if you turn up with paper state­ments as a defence barrister so that you can give witnesses a copy of their statement when you want to cross-examine them on it but, more often than not, there will be a paper copy somewhere in the room or the court can get one. I have learned to work without paper.

I got a Surface because I wanted to be even more paper-less than I was. You don’t need to carry Archbold and other heavy books. I have got a digital copy of Blackstone’s Criminal Practice that I can search through. There was a time where you would need a wheely bag full of your civil procedure rules. I haven’t used a wheely bag once since being on my feet.

NB: I remember hauling round for many years a wheely bag full of lever arch folders and a big heavy copy of Archbold and the supplement and the second supplement and then the third supplement. I was glad to say goodbye to all that weightlifting.

TW: When I was a County Court advocate I was carrying both volumes of the White Book around and at least 60 pages for each possession claim and I did six or seven of those per day. So, I’m glad to get shut of all that weight, too!

NB: Would you describe practising in crime to be sociable and colle­giate or is there a lot of time spent working alone at a desk?

TW: There will be some weeks where I am in local courts, when I see lots of familiar faces and can have a nice chat to my fellow juniors and other people in my Chambers. There will be weeks where I’m in far- flung courts and I don’t see any familiar faces with no real opportunity to develop a rapport with anyone that’s there. When I go home, I am working on my own at a desk rather than in Chambers with five or six other people.

My Chambers is very sociable and I have developed friendships with a lot of my colleagues. We do hang out socially when we can. We will go out on a Friday night and have a drink together and share war stories. That can be quite a good bonding experience for people who do this job, you do need that. You have got to be independent but that can get quite lonely for some people. So make the most of socialising with your Chambers when you can, that is the lesson there.

NB: What would you say are your typical hours of work?

TW: Every day is different and every week is different. Some weeks I might do three hours a day involving travelling to court, doing a quick plea-in-mitigation, then travelling back. Some weeks I will be doing 18 hours a day just because I’ve got so many deadlines coinciding at once. Last week was quite difficult because I had to draft a defence statement on one case, I had an Advice due on another case and I was getting instructed on last minute hearings, having to try and manage everything at once. In addition, things do come up on the day that you don’t expect so you can’t always say, right, well, I’m going to divvy out my time. There will be days where you don’t sleep or you don’t get much sleep, but there are days where you might get a bit of a lie and might even be able to go straight back to bed for a ‘power-nap’ after the hear­ing before getting back to work if you have the luxury of time (which is rare!), so it’s variable. Typically I will be doing at least eight hours a day if it’s just a paper day, usually more if I am in court that day.

NB: You mentioned there is a lot of travelling?

TW: Yes. I ’m currently based in Manchester. When I prosecute I tend to do so in Greater Manchester but I have travelled to Liverpool. In my very first week of pupillage, I was sent from Manchester to Wolverhampton, Llandudno and Caernarfon. To be fair, I think that’s because my clerks thought they were doing me a favour because I grew up on Anglesey and they thought, oh well, we are just sending him home - whereas it was a little bit more of a trek than that! I recently went to Telford for a road traffic job. I have been as far north as Windermere and Scarborough. I have been as far south as Gloucester. That Gloucester case was actually a Crown Court case which was being privately prosecuted and I was defending. There were a lot of ineffective hearings because the prosecu­tion just failed to take certain steps in advance of each hearing. So I had to go all the way down to Gloucester on a three-hour train, got all my work done in advance just to be told on arrival, we are not ready! Resulting effectively in a wasted journey.

NB: How much of your work is Manchester-based, would you say, as a proportion?

TW: I would say 60% to 70% in fairness, it’s just that it tends to come in dribs and drabs. I will be two weeks Manchester, then I will have a whole week where I am somewhere different every day that isn’t Manchester, then I will have another week in Manchester.

NB: Before you started the job, what were your expectations about travel?

TW: I knew I would be travelling a lot, but I also thought I would be get­ting paid for it, I suppose. It was getting frustrating with my old laptop because the battery kept running out after half an hour, so I couldn’t work on the way to wherever I was going. Part of the reason I wanted to be a barrister was because I knew there would be travelling. I have done 9 to 5 in an office, it didn’t really suit me sitting at the same desk every day. On the one hand, yes, it can be quite lonely because you are not working with the same colleagues all the time; on the other hand, you do get the variety of different courts, different faces, different clients. So my expectations were that I would be travelling a lot; that’s what I signed up for.

NB: That is what attracted me about the job as well. I know a few people who wouldn’t like the job because they don’t like the unpredict­ability of it.

TW: I wanted variety, I wanted to do different things every day, I didn’t want to get bored sitting at the same desk all the time. No disrespect to those who do, it just doesn’t suit me.

NB: Next question is about wellbeing. I wondered how you found the work-life balance in what you’re doing and whether your experience is the same as contemporaries who may or may not be in the same area of law?

TW: I think this is something that the Bar is still struggling with to be honest. There are still people who think that it is a tagline they can put into a Twitter post now and again and not really focus on how to actually bring wellbeing to the Bar. There is so much focus on this idea of needing a work-life balance but then you are expected to do things overnight without sleeping properly and then be expected to turn up for a trial the next day. I think the unpredictable nature of the work is one thing that causes us to struggle with that.

The amount of work that can be involved in a very short time is an issue. If I have got a week full of prosecution lists for example, it will be 18-hour days because I will have to prepare the trials the night before, get up, go to court, deal with the cases (which may or may not end up as fully-contested trials or legal arguments), then afterwards write all my attendance notes for those and prepare for the next day and so on. If I have multiple prosecution lists in a week, I will not sleep much that week. But doing all of that for very little pay is the bit that you can struggle with. Most people would think, if I work this hard, at least I can get a holiday in due course. If the holiday never materialises because of work or lack of pay, then there is a problem.

The other thing that can impact on wellbeing is the nature of the work itself. In criminal law, you will see some messed-up things and you will deal with some messed-up people and there is no support for that in the same way as there might be in other lines of work. I know that there are certain types of police officer who are assigned to a certain type of case during a rotation, then after that rotation, they are done. They never have to do it again and they might even be offered counsel­ling. There is nothing like that at the Bar. The nature of the things that we are expected to deal with just isn’t addressed by the bodies or the powers that be who want to focus on wellbeing so much. If we are seri­ous about wellbeing, more needs to be done than just go ‘oh there’s a seminar once every six months about how to look after yourself’. I think there is more work to be done personally, especially in crime given the way that criminal barristers are treated at the moment.

NB: In terms of pay?

TW: It’s not just a wellbeing issue - the proposed extended operating hours scheme is arguably discriminatory to some members of the Bar, particularly those who are parents or those with family commitments, as a lot of high-profile commentators on Twitter have recently pointed out.

But even without extended operating hours, self-care is difficult. On the one hand, people are saying look after yourselves; on the other hand, while I’m prosecuting, there is no such thing as a lunch break for me. There is this idea that you will adjourn at 1pm, you will come back at 2pm and everything that needs to be done by 2pm will be done come hell or high water.

NB: And the things that must be done by 2pm never seem to include the advocate’s lunch. Yes, I know exactly what you mean.

TW: They will insist on an hour because the clerks and the ushers need to eat - of course they do, they are vital court staff. But the consideration of the advocates is just not brought into it. The amount of times cases are listed with no consideration for our availability is shocking. We will say that day doesn’t suit me I’m afraid, can we put it on another day? The court just says, well, tough, get somebody else to cover it. So I lose the money for that hearing having to pay someone else out of the brief fee to cover the case for me, and all because the court doesn’t want to accommodate me. Things like that don’t sit well, and I imagine not just with me. Wellbeing, it’s a nice word but that’s all it seems to be.

NB: Can I ask about diversity. Is there is anything you would like to tell us about your experiences of sex equality, race equality, social mobil­ity, and any other thing that you think touches on that very broad topic of diversity at the Bar.

TW: As a cis-gendered, heterosexual white male, I don’t think I have been a massive victim of any issues in that respect. I come from a fairly working-class background. Both of my parents were service workers, I was the first to go to university and I will admit, I had something of a chip on my shoulder when I first came to the Bar because it had taken me a while to get pupillage to begin with and, to an extent, I felt that had something to do with my background.

Having said that, I can’t say I have experienced any direct discrimina­tion along those lines. That’s not to say I’m not aware of others experi­encing such issues, and from their experiences it’s clear the Bar does still have some way to go.

In terms of diversity in our jobs generally, I have seen issues with the way certain demographics are treated particularly in the Magistrates’ Courts as well. There can be differences in the way that certain defend­ants are treated compared with others. I don’t think it’s something that I have massively experienced other than indirectly on the class side of things.

NB: Interesting about the LBGTQ +clinic that Chambers operates, that’s a really good innovation.

TW: We have got that clinic going on and as I say I come from a very progressive set of Chambers. We are one of the few Chambers that had a presence at Pride the two years that we went. We do a lot with the LGBTQ+ community. I very much consider myself an ally of the com­munity. Hate crime I’ve seen a bit of in the work, and it’s mostly been racialised rather than homophobic. I have advised people about prob­lems they have faced from being a member of the LGBTQ+ community but in terms of issues like that at the Bar, I can’t say I have seen it per­sonally. I definitely know it exists because of my dealings with those who suffer it, and I would like to think that if I witnessed it myself I would call it out then and there.

NB: Is there anything that you would like to say about that topic of income progression in the early years in crime?

TW: I hate to be all doom and gloom about it... We are trying to inspire people to come into the job here. In terms of job satisfaction after a job well done, absolutely crime is fantastic. In terms of money, if you are the kind of person who is becoming a lawyer for the pay, then do not go into crime. Crime does not pay, even for lawyers. Certain types of Crown Court cases might be seen to make a lot of money if you are quite jun­ior, and if you end up in a set that gets a lot of junior-end Crown Court work, then by all means, go for it. I took a pay cut to come to the Bar from being a paralegal. Only this year has it started to pay off, but with no certainty that I’m going to stay at the same level of income. I have been doing the job for two years. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t strug­gled to begin with. There is obviously the question of aged debt - there are some clients who pay quickly but there are others who take ages to pay - if they pay at all. Taking steps against those who don’t pay is dif­ficult because you don’t want to put people off instructing you on more profitable work they may bring in the future. Prosecution lists pay well and pay quickly but it does show there is a disparity when you are not getting paid the same for defence work. You can make a living, but you won’t be getting a mortgage in the first few years at least and if you want a pension, well, again, don’t come to the criminal bar.

NB: What thoughts do you have about the future of the Bar in crime?

TW: Again, I hate to be negative but we have had the prime minister publicly claiming it’s the fault of lawyers that the criminal justice system is not working as it should.

NB: Yes. He said the criminal justice system is ‘hamstrung by lawyers’. TW: Absolutely. The story is that we are the cause of the system being held up - even though I had a trial that was supposed to take place on 1st September 2020 and got shunted off for the simple reason that the court didn’t have the facilities to have a two-person trial. That’s my fault obviously! I accept full responsibility for the court system not having the funding to conduct that criminal trial in these times! Sarcasm aside, I think that at the moment things are only going to get worse before they are going to get better.

I love my job. I consider myself to have quite progressive values, so I quite like what I do from that perspective, particularly when defend­ing because I’m standing up for my clients against potential oppression from the state. If I just went and re-trained in personal injury, I’d make a lot more money and I wouldn’t get attacked by the government just for doing my job. It’s only because I believe in what I stand for and the independent nature of being a barrister that I haven’t already quit. I like being independent; I don’t like waving a corporate flag and I like being the one who is able to stand on behalf of someone, to stand between them and the state that’s trying to punish them and say, ‘no, you hear what they have to say first’.

When somebody is accused of a criminal offence that they swear blind they haven’t committed, they will be the first person asking for a criminal lawyer to represent them. Because I believe in what I do, I will still be the one who turns up at court and says ‘yes, you may hate me, you may hate what I stand for, but I will represent you just as I will represent anyone else’. One day, maybe, more people will start to understand why we need a properly-funded criminal justice system and something will change. I feel despair, but also hope even though it’s harder to find.

Postscript:

At the time of reviewing this interview, I have now finally conducted a Crown Court trial. Yes, it was stressful and my client was ultimately found guilty - but my client was still grateful for all my efforts in making sure that he received a fair trial. It was everything I hoped it would be.

Also at the time of review, we are eagerly awaiting the publication of the Criminal Legal Aid Review which will determine whether the crimi­nal bar will receive a pay rise anytime soon, or whether we will have to take action before we see any worthwhile change...