Confessions of a Barrister - Russell Winnock

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      ‘Hi,’ I said.

      ‘Hi,’ she repeated, then turned to her friend (who was smiling at me with a weird interest), ‘this is Russell Winnock,’ said Kelly, ‘he’s a barrister from Gray’s Buildings.’ I smiled at the friend, and shook her hand. ‘I’m Beverley,’ she said.

      ‘So,’ I said, and turned to the miserably beautiful Kelly Backworth. ‘Kelly, what happened? I thought we’d done a good job for Mrs West. Then, whoosh, I’m getting both barrels from your boss.’

      Kelly looked down for a second. ‘Yes,’ she said, quietly, ‘I’m sorry about that – she can be a bit of a cow.’

      ‘A bit of a cow,’ I exclaimed, ‘that’s an understatement. I don’t know who would come off worse in a fight, your Mrs Murdoch or Phi, the psychopath we were representing.’

      A small, barely noticeable smile flickered across Kelly’s mouth. Not rainbows, not frolicking mythical beasts, not teeth – but the hint of a smile nonetheless.

      ‘Seriously though,’ I continued, ‘Mrs West got a great deal, there’s every chance that if we hadn’t settled things, she’d have left court with nothing at all.’

      ‘But you were instructed to get an injunction,’ she said to me, her voice strong, yet friendly. And at this point, I confess, I really, really fancied Kelly Backworth.

      ‘We wouldn’t have got one though,’ I said. ‘You should have seen the burn mark Porky Phi had branded into Mr West’s chest.’

      ‘That’s the thing, Mr Winnock,’ said Kelly, ‘I didn’t see it. If you’d have shown me, I would have been able to defend you to Mrs Murdoch.’

      She was right. Bloody hell. Kelly was completely right. In my enthusiasm, in my desire to sort out the case, I’d forgotten to include my instructing solicitors in the process. And that, more than anything, was why I’d been given such a roasting. I understood it now. I got it. You see it’s not all about the barrister, it’s not all about the person who stands up in court, the relationship with a solicitor is just as important, and I had neglected it.

      I looked at Kelly.

      ‘Please,’ I mumbled, ‘call me Russ. Mr Winnock makes me sound like the maths teacher everyone hated.’

      She smiled again. This time it was a definite smile. There were teeth and everything.

      I thought about offering to buy them both a drink, but before the thought could become an offer, Johnny was shouting at me from the other side of the bar, ‘Oi, Winnock, are you brewing those beers or what?’

      I looked at Kelly. ‘I’d better go,’ I said, and she nodded.

      ‘And, yes,’ I added, ‘you’re right, sorry, I should have brought you with me to see Mr West’s chest.’

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘we had a phone call from Mrs West today, she thought you were the dog’s bollocks.’

      Now my face broke into a deep grin. ‘Really?’

      Kelly smiled again, ‘Yes.’

      A couple of hours later, I staggered from the pub out into the cold air.

      I looked up and contemplated the vastness for a few seconds, then made my way to the bus stop.

      I felt sad at the fact that Johnny was leaving the Bar. I remembered us all going to lectures and stressing about assignments and trying to get jobs, and practising our speeches on each other for our mock trials and Bar Finals. I remembered how chuffed we were on the day we were called to the Bar, declared an ‘utter barrister’. Allowed to practise and call ourselves Learned, wear a wig and gown. It had all been so exciting. It had meant everything. And now Johnny had given it all up. And that somehow seemed a massive waste. I wouldn’t be giving up though – no way. I wouldn’t be giving up, because I knew I could do it, succeed, and what’s more, Mrs West knew it as well, which is why she’d said I was the dog’s bollocks.

       The importance of pages

      It is rare that a week goes by without me receiving some sort of brief involving drugs – usually involving someone selling them, or stealing people’s goods to pay for them. It strikes me that if Parliament made drugs lawful, crime would dry up and I would have to seriously think about an alternative career.

      So when I picked up a new set of instructions from my pigeonhole, I wasn’t in the least bit surprised to discover a drugs case involving a man called Simon, who had the misfortune to be stopped by police with ten bags of crack cocaine hidden in his socks.

      I looked at the brief and immediately noted from the index that there 49 pages of statements and 27 pages of exhibits – which means the interview, any relevant photographs or other documents. So, in total there were 76 pages of evidence – this is significant.

      Why? I hear you ask. You might think that the number of pages is significant because it means that the evidence against my client is strong, or perhaps, conversely, you’re thinking that doesn’t sound like a lot of pages, or maybe you’re feeling sorry for me having to read all those pages.

      Well, actually, its significance is far simpler – true the page count can reflect the strength of a case, but not always. In fact sometimes the most damning cases can be contained in a few meagre pages. Nor does the workload really bother us, we’ll read all the pages, come what may. No, the number of pages is significant because it is directly linked with how much money each case will be paid.

      As I have mentioned, in the main, criminal barristers are self-employed and every barrister doing legal aid work will, at some point, wonder how much they are going to be paid for their endeavours – and the greater the number of pages, the higher the fee.

      It works something like this: for the purpose of payment, each case is categorised according to what crime appears on the indictment. Murder, for example, is in the highest category as it is deemed to be the most serious offence, then comes rape, other sexual offences, complicated fraud and so on, all the way down to shoplifting and criminal damage where the cost of repair is under five thousand pounds. There is a flat fee for each of these offences, which is then increased according to the number of pages. For example a burglary with twelve pages of evidence is not going to be worth as much as a burglary with 120 pages of evidence, or a murder with 933 pages.

      If the matter goes to trial, then the fee is increased with the payment of a further amount of money for each day of the trial – which are known as refreshers (apart from day two, which, bizarrely, we do for free!).

      Now, don’t get me wrong, nearly all criminal barristers will take whatever case comes their way, and do their very best, but, because of the way we are paid, a lucrative case would be a rape trial lasting many weeks, with hundreds of pages of evidence, whilst a less financially attractive case would be a theft which goes to trial, lasting two days, with 26 pages of evidence; which is, alas, more common for most jobbing junior barristers.

      There is also something called a cracked trial. This is when someone pleads guilty on the day of trial or shortly before, which is worth more than if the person pleads guilty at the earliest opportunity.

      The practical implication of all this is that, very often, barristers who are doing the job honestly and professionally will find themselves advising against their own financial self-interest.

      Take the following couple of examples.

      I was instructed to defend a Polish chap whose family had been involved in a feud with another Polish family. There were over 700 pages on the brief and the trial was listed to last for five weeks – it would have been worth a few bob to say the least.

      On the morning of the first day, my client, whose name was Jan Koszlak – a very nice man as it happens, if you put to one side his penchant

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