Circuit Profile: Practice in Wales

I was born and raised in Cardiff, educated in the local Catholic school – the sort of school where the academically brilliant and committed could shine, but a dyslexic who could muddle through would be left to do just that. School holidays meant watching Crown Court on TV, and I decided I wanted to be a lawyer around the age of five. But although the substance of schoolwork didn’t present any difficulties, getting things down on paper did, and I just as quickly forgot that ambition. It would remain forgotten until a fortuitous chat in a bar on a ferry to Spain. But that’s a story for a different occasion…

After achieving A-level grades that wouldn’t secure me a pupillage interview nowadays, I completed a degree in French and Spanish at the University of Wolverhampton. There I received what continues to seem to me an excellent education, and, more importantly, I met my now-wife. 

Having decided to try for the Bar, I asked each Inn for their blurb – this was before the interweb. Grays sent me some photocopies, which didn’t impress. Inner’s was professionally produced, but its tone was somewhat snooty, so it was out. Lincoln’s was better, but Middle’s was, in those days at least, the only Inn that interviewed all scholarship applicants. It’s all very well for the working-class kid who’s not only exceptionally gifted, but who has the teaching and parental encouragement, and who doesn’t have the sort of disability all too easily overlooked. Middle Temple seemed a place where someone like me might feel welcome.

The Inn has been good to me. I received an entrance exhibition, a Jules Thorn Scholarship that covered nearly all of my BPTC costs (accommodation was provided by what my wife calls the ‘Trini Clares scholarship’), and then the Anglo-American scholarship. Friendships made with my sponsor (Master Nicholas Vineall), via scholarships (Master Nick Critelli) or simply at dinners, last to this day.

Pupillage-less, by good fortune and some self-made luck, I ended up in Gibraltar. After two years there, I did pupillage in a London criminal set. Deciding that neither the criminal Bar nor London was for me, I went back to the Rock and spent seven sometimes enjoyable, often turbulent years there. 

There were numerous constitutional points to be considered, and with the influence of the Human Rights Act, a judicial willingness to uphold at least some of them. It wasn’t all Mediterranean sunshine. My still undiagnosed dyslexia was a problem for some of the tasks in a fused profession. Gibraltar has never had an anti-establishment Silk, and my practice was invariably for the little man or woman. At least in Wales, if I don’t get Silk, it might be on merit.

Coming home was more about hopes than frustrations. Devolution promised exciting legal developments. As someone who’d argued many constitutional cases, I wanted to be part of that. 30 Park Place gave me the chance to do that.

I’ve developed a specialism in police law. It suits me. Those with power should be held to account. It combines public law with cross-examination of witnesses. My solicitors keep coming back to me, so they think I’m doing something right. It’s the closest thing the civil Bar has to crime, but without the last-minute cramming that criminal practice as a junior seems to involve. I still do some other work – inquests, some commercial disputes, and I keep my hand in defamation. If I haven’t undertaken as much conventional administrative law or disciplinary work as I would have liked, a full diary of almost all police cases isn’t a bad lot.

There is a legitimate question as to whether a civil barrister in Wales can get beyond senior junior status. As of the time of writing, no civil practitioner based primarily in Welsh chambers has been made a silk since 2010. That’s not due to a lack of able and deserving candidates. However, we become accustomed to being overlooked – KCA doesn’t even bother to hold interviews in one of the two national capitals it serves.

I have had chambers in London. Full membership of one set – always secondary to Cardiff – was followed by working door tenancies in a couple of others. But by far the most successful of my forays into the English Bar has been an associate tenancy at St Paul’s Chambers, Leeds. They’re an able and unstuffy lot, and have made me very welcome.

Other frustrations range from micro-aggressions received, together with a solicitor with a strong Liverpool accent, from opponents on one particular occasion, to being persuaded to help a (local!) solicitor with a seminar on defamation, only to be told by that very same solicitor that they only used London counsel in such cases. Supreme Court judges who refer to a case arising in Barry as concerning ‘English’ law set a poor example. If we can rightly say ‘British and Irish Lions’, we can say ‘England & Wales’.

Those frustrations are outweighed by the benefits of practice here. My dyslexia impacts the volume of work I can do. A home less than 20 minutes by bike from my chambers, with enough room for my wife and me each to have a study, wouldn’t be possible in London. My specialism enables me to work across jurisdictions, allowing me to be based anywhere. Cardiff offers an excellent quality of life. And I’ve been able to build up a jurisdiction-wide specialism in a field of my choice.

I’ve not forgotten what Middle Temple has done for me. Whenever possible, I go to events held in South Wales. I’ve had a number of spondees. My diary has so far prevented me from judging moots for the Inn, but I live in hope. I also try to give back more generally. I’m involved with both my chambers’ and my circuit’s Equality and Disability Committees, and with Allbar. I rarely go to London – but if I am there on a Friday, I’ll try to have fish and chips in Hall. 

The Bar can still present obstacles to a working-class kid. There is an understanding of merit – a concept as much in the eye of the beholder as beauty – that seems to favour the children of the privileged. There is an obsession with black-tie events (I loathe black tie and invariably feel an outsider). There is the cost of qualification. But of the snakes and ladders I’ve experienced, Middle Temple has been a ladder. Few who criticise the Inns have done as much practically as Middle Temple has done for this working-class kid at the Bar. And for that, it has my gratitude.

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