Confessions of a Barrister - Russell Winnock

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I don’t mean leave the profession – well, not yet, anyway. I mean another area of law.’

      ‘What, like Chancery or commercial?’

      This appealed to me. Chancery and commercial barristers earn massive amounts of money, they are the true fat cats of the Bar. They are the boys – and they are usually male – who drive sports cars and have fancy apartments and expensive suits. The idea of becoming a Chancery barrister was attractive.

      Clem Wilson laughed spitefully.

      ‘No, I was thinking family law.’

      The image of me in a sports car evaporated, and was replaced by one of me in that most desperately sad of places: the Family Court. The Family Bar is even harder up than the Criminal Bar. The Family Courts are where people go to pore over the ashes of their failed marriages and broken families. The barristers who appear there are usually gentle souls who wear woolly cardigans under their robes, whilst the solicitors are the exact opposite – hard, horrible, trenchant – iron-willed storm troopers who will promise their client that they will take their former partner ‘to the cleaners’ – and then do everything they can to make good their vow.

      I have no interest in the Family Courts. I hadn’t been there for over five years, when I had found myself literally banging my head against a wall as my client, a rather stinky woman, refused to agree to allow her child to be picked up from McDonald’s at 5.30 every Friday for a contact session with the father, insisting instead that it should be 6pm from Burger King. No, I am a criminal barrister – we are the heavyweight boxers of the legal world, the strutting, posing cocks of the robing room – there is no way I’m going to wear a cardie and help society’s failed former lovers sort out who gets the telly and who gets the cat.

      Clem Wilson looked at me.

      ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think the Family Courts may be the future for you, Mr Winnock, what with your liberal conscience and that.’

      I’m not sure how he’s concluded that I have a liberal conscience.

      ‘That’s why I have taken a brief for you at the Family Court tomorrow.’

      ‘What? No. Thanks Clem, but it’s not for me.’

      ‘It’s for Whinstanley and Cooper,’ he said, then repeated slowly and with more than a hint of menace, ‘Whinstanley and Cooper,’ in an attempt to scare me. It worked.

      ‘They are a massive firm, Mr Winnock,’ he added, ‘they bring in lots of work to chambers, and they need someone to do an injunction hearing tomorrow. You are available.’

      I sighed. I considered refusing. I considered digging my heels in. But I knew that any resistance would be futile. A big firm of solicitors wanted to instruct a barrister for a hearing and I was to be that barrister. They were far too important to chambers for Clem Wilson to refuse the work. I sighed, and before I could say another word, my Senior Clerk had placed in my hand a small bundle of papers tied with pink ribbon. On the front were the words West v West.

      Silently I left the Senior Clerk’s room.

      So, what is the difference between a barrister and a solicitor? Well, the answer goes far beyond who wears a wig and who doesn’t. Whilst some of the traditional differences are being diminished and done away with, in other ways, the distinction is still there and many of us would argue it is just as important as it has always been. Hopefully it will become clearer as my story continues, and, as it happens, the case of West v West isn’t a bad place to start to show the complexity of the solicitor–barrister relationship …

       West v West

      I placed my hateful blue bag of shame on the floor then plonked the brief of West v West on my desk, making sure that it landed with a disdainful thud, causing my conscientious roommate Amir to look up. He was busily reading a rather crusty, yellowing law book.

      ‘Oh dear, you don’t look very happy,’ he suggested and I harrumphed and muttered something about having lost a case that morning. Amir grinned at me – ‘Just get it billed mate, and think about the cheque,’ he said, which is the barrister’s equivalent of being told that there are plenty more fish in the sea, just after being dumped.

      He’s right though – just move on to the next case, that is what we do. I looked down at the papers in West v West.

      I unwrapped the pink ribbon and started to read it. Why pink ribbon? I have no idea, but briefs are wrapped in pink ribbon, they always have been and they always will be (apart from Court of Appeal briefs, they are wrapped in white ribbon, yep, beats me too).

      I am instructed to represent Mrs Phi Li West; a Thai woman who came to the UK eight years ago to marry Mr Graeme West. Things were great at first (aren’t they always?), but don’t appear to be now, because now Mrs West wants an injunction and non-molestation order from the court. This will prevent Mr West from going near her and using any violence or making any threat to harm her.

      Okay. So far so good, I have enough of a recollection of this procedure to feel confident that I can obtain the injunction as instructed.

      I read Mrs West’s statement.

      I read that she came over to the UK having met Mr West at a function. Yeah, ‘function’ – only if ‘function’ is the Thai word for mail-order-bride website. I stopped myself. I know I’m only being cynical because I’m sulking at the prospect of being in the Family Courts.

      Amir looked up from his desk. ‘So, where are you tomorrow?’

      I mumbled my answer miserably, ‘Family Court.’

      ‘What?’ he exclaimed. ‘I didn’t know you did family work?’

      ‘I don’t,’ I said, trying to retain my pride and dignity, ‘I’m just doing it as a favour to Clem and the solicitors, you know how things are.’

      He shot me a genuine smile, because he’s a genuinely nice guy. ‘Best make sure you’ve got your woolly cardie and sandals out of the back of your wardrobe.’

      I smiled. But I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want to be doing a case about a failed marriage.

      The rest of Mrs Phi West’s story is a rather sad one. They’d been trying for a child, but hadn’t managed to conceive. At which point Mr West had, allegedly, started to become controlling of Mrs West, not allowing her out with her friends, hacking into her phone and email accounts, that kind of thing, until finally, they’d had a fight and he had grabbed her round the neck, causing her abrasions and some swelling.

      As it happens, as I write this, I’m single. And, when I read stories like the Wests’ I’m quite glad that I’m single. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some kind of cynical old bastard who’s been cruelly savaged by a love affair, or some kind of commitment-phobe who goes around trying to bed as many women as he can in an attempt to cover up for inadequacies elsewhere, I just haven’t met the right girl yet. Which is actually my mother’s phrase, but I’m happy to adopt it.

      I suppose Graeme West thought he’d met the right girl. I suppose he thought that he’d create a little family and could live happily and contentedly ever after – well, he got that wrong.

      The next day I turned up at the City Family Court Centre, a massive and rather ugly modern building constructed at a time before austerity. I didn’t need my blue bag – no wigs and gowns in the Family Court.

      The atmosphere inside this court is different. Whereas in a Crown Court there is always an air of excitement and suspense, here there is just despondency and despair. These people aren’t bad, they’re just unhappy.

      I stood in the reception area and watched as a little toddler tentatively meandered away from a girl who looked about nineteen years old and who I assumed was his mother. She sat looking vacantly into the middle distance as he waddled towards a Yucca plant, fell into

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