Not always an honourl

Last week I talked about my first trial. However for the young barrister inevitably not everything goes according to plan.

Last Minute

You are often given cases at the last minute. Perhaps someone is held up in another court and cannot do the case they were supposed to. In civil cases, an urgent need for an injunction (order stopping someone from doing something) might mean you racing off to court. Alternatively someone might have missed that the case was due to be heard. Frequently in criminal matters an arrest means somebody needs to turn up and apply for bail.

Urgent cases can often involve senior lawyers. If a family want to challenge a decision to stop a life-support machine, unless there is agreement to await a court challenge you have to get an order stopping it. An order after the person has died is of no use whatsoever. In many cases speed is essential.

Minor Cases

However there also tend to be lots of relatively minor cases which require someone to step in at the last minute. Often that is because, being minor and relatively simple, lawyers know that those cases can always be shifted to someone else in the last minute if necessary. For the junior barrister, wanting to build up a practice, you want to be available to go out and do whatever you can get. Run off on an urgent job and do well, and the solicitor might use you again for rather more important cases.

Times have changed. When I started at the bar, I aimed to end up specialising in commercial work. However when you started you did a bit of everything. Crime, family, all types of civil case, basically anything that was available. Nowadays although very junior barristers still have to be available to do cases on an urgent basis, they tend to specialise far more quickly. Whilst there are advantages in that, I think there is also a lot be said for a grounding which sees you doing every type of case and having to cross examine every type of witness.

Bail Application

On one particular day I was sent off to do an urgent bail application . That was in the Crown Court. The highest level of first instance judge is a High Court Judge. (He is addressed as "My Lord", "My Lady" or "Your Lordship".). The next level down is a Circuit Judge. They sit in both the County Court (civil cases) and the Crown Court (criminal cases). They are addressed as "Your Honour", or where the context requires referred to as "His Honour" or "Her Honour".

Usually in the Crown Court it will be a Circuit Judge sitting, save for the most serious cases. Then a High Court Judge may sit. The High Court Judges will also hear cases in the High Court on civil matters. Again, the County Court will deal with most minor civil and some medium importance cases, with the most substantial cases being heard in the High Court. This of course is as regards the legal complexity and value. What in legal terms might be called a minor case may be vitally important to the person whose case it is, and judges of course always bear that in mind.

A Bad Start

I had appeared in the Crown Court a few times. I had always been before Circuit Judges. A High Court Judge sitting in the Crown Court wears a different robe. However, having been sent off on an urgent bail application, when I went into court and I failed to spot this difference and addressed in him as "Your Honour". He erupted. "You can't be very experienced or any good if you don't know what to call a High Court Judge" he shouted. More comments in the same vein. All in open court, all in front of the client, in front of everyone.

In the face of my repeated apologies, the judge calmed down. After that unpromising beginning, I had to make my bail application. It was a very difficult application to make, particularly because the man had been arrested for committing a robbery having previously been given bail for an alleged offence of committing a robbery. No one expected me to get bail for him.

I did not get bail. The judge told the client that despite the fact that I had skilfully made every point that could be made on his behalf, he was not getting bail. The client was philosophical when I saw him in the prison cells afterwards. He hadn't expected bail, but was pleased that I hadn't given up despite the judge having started the way he did.

Unremembered

Many years later, as a QC I was a fellow speaker at a legal conference with the judge, by then retired. There was no reason for him to remember the incident, or that it involved me. Since I do exclusively commercial type topics these days, he would never have associated me with a criminal case. In any event he must have had thousands of barristers in front of him over the years. He would hardly remember one event from so long ago. I got on very well with the judge. I thought of mentioning my bail application, but then decided it would serve no purpose. It would be very difficult not to make it sound like I was complaining. In fact he did me a favour. I never addressed any judge incorrectly ever again. (If one excludes the occasion when, having been dispatched to some distant court where there was a change of judge at the last moment, I referred to a judge as "His Honour" when in fact the judge was a woman. In my own defence, there was nothing in her appearance to suggest that she was. However, that was a failure to identify the gender of the judge, not a failure to know what the correct title was.)

Michael J. Booth QC