QC BLOG: INTRODUCTION

The Rules

Each week here in QC blog you will read a piece about legal life from the inside. However it is vital that you understand precisely what is being done, and why this is how it has to be done.

A Lawyer's Duty

Lawyers have two main duties. To their clients, and the court. A lawyer must never knowingly mislead the court. If your client tells you that the reason he missed the last hearing was because he couldn't be bothered turning up and preferred to watch a World Cup match on the telly, you cannot tell the court that he was ill or say something else you know to be untrue. That does not mean that you have to tell the court what your client said. You can merely say you cannot offer any excuse. If your client tells you that the Judge seems as thick as two short planks and resembles a paedophile, it is not misleading the court to decide that it is sensible to fail to mention this.

Knowing that something is untrue is different from doubting what your client has to say. If your client's instructions are that he was kidnapped on the way to court, held by masked men and then inexplicably released at the end of the day, and that is his excuse for not turning up, this might seem fanciful but it is for the court to judge that not you. What you must not do is put forward information you know to be untrue (not merely suspect is untrue).

Confidentiality

Subject to this duty you are obliged to represent your clients to the best of your ability, fairly and fearlessly . You also keep their confidences. If this were a priest's blog, you would not expect him to recount what he heard in confession, still less to allow there to be any risk that some hapless parishioner could be directly identified.

This means that a lawyer's diary has to keep in mind these limitations. I cannot tell you confidences given (as opposed to matters which occur in open court). I also want to protect anonymity as regards matters not appearing in open court.

Protection

This means that where necessary I must change details so as to disguise identity. To protect the guilty as well as the innocent. The substance of what is said here will always be true, but I will change such surrounding details as are necessary to preserve anonymity and confidentiality where that must apply.

The same applies as regards timescale. What I tell you about in the diary might have happened last week, last month, last year or 10 years or more ago. I might tell stories as if they involve me when they involve another lawyer known to me, or I might tell stories that appear to be about another lawyer when in fact I am the one involved.

Now and Always

These are the rules which QC blog will operate under, because it must, and because if lawyers will not respect the rules who will? Subject to that, what this weekly diary is going to do is to show you what it is really like. From the inside.

Just remember that these rules will apply to every piece.

Michael J. Booth QC