Benchmark revisited part 3
Becoming a QC is not as significant a shift as becoming a tenant. Becoming a tenant determines whether you are going to be able to pursue your chosen career at all. Whilst becoming a QC is obviously something that you want and have worked towards, it is not the be all and end all in the way becoming a tenant is. It is more a question of the icing on the cake.
The timing is also different as regards becoming a QC. You apply to become a QC, and if you don't get it then you can apply in the next round of applications. You can apply again and again and again if you want. Some people have eventually become a QC after applications going well into double figures. Others have made application after application and never got it. (I can think of two different people who each applied at least 14 times, one got it eventually, one didn't). Getting a tenancy is different in the sense that there is a very limited window of opportunity. If you are not kept on by the Chambers that you have gone to, then there are chances for additional pupillage elsewhere with a view to a tenancy, but unless you find somewhere relatively quickly that is likely to be it. Therefore when you are applying, you have not really got the luxury of thinking that it all might be different in a couple of years.
However when you become a QC you definitely notice the change of status. Whilst it is difficult to become a barrister and get a tenancy, everyone knows that there are some barristers who are not really up to scratch. (Very much a very tiny minority, but there it is). If you are a QC everyone assumes you must be very good, although in some cases that would be an incorrect assumption. There was a successful barrister who became a judge. (I remember her telling this story when I was still a junior, since she was senior to me). She said that when she applied for silk herself she was encouraged to do so by the thought of various QCs she could think of who, whilst they were good, were not exactly brilliant, and who she felt she should be more than a match for. When she received her letter stating that her application had been successful, she suddenly started to think of all those QCs who were absolutely outstanding and who she might find herself up against every day of the week. In the event she managed pretty well.
When you are wearing your silk robes then you are immediately recognizable as a QC. (These days you only really wear them for trials, although in the past there used to be more hearings at which you would appear in robes). There is one particular court centre which is very bad about providing lecterns. Those are the wooden things which go on the desk for you to rest your papers on. They are very important because, although all of your files will not go on, you need something to put your notebook on, or the particular file you are reading. Without them it is very difficult to manage shifting your gaze from the papers to the judge or the witness. Most courts provide them as a matter of course. It is only this one particular centre whether is a problem.
Having asked for a lectern on various visits to this court, without having received any real assistance or reaction, there came a day when I asked and it was as if an alarm at gone off. Court staff were running around and every effort was made. It was only afterwards that it occurred to me that this was the first time I had asked when wearing a silk's robes. It was a good illustration of the way in which you are sometimes treated very differently when you're a QC.