Supporting evidence
‘It’s time to get rid of the dead wood and bureaucracy and allow solicitors and barristers who care for justice before profit to get on with their work unhindered’ insists Stanley Best
The article ‘A Disturbing Tale’ by Inside Time managing editor Eric McGraw (February issue) is particularly welcome because it offers independent support for what I and others have been noting and commenting upon for some time.
There are excellent solicitors who take their duties seriously and work competently in seeking first and foremost the best outcome which can be obtained for their prisoner clients, but there are others (as Eric McGraw reveals) who do let the side down.
The solicitors whose conduct was exposed in ‘A Disturbing Tale’ and who, in a letter to the client, refer to Mr C (a solicitor) as ‘a barrister’ surely cannot think that anyone reading that article is going to swallow the excuse that this … ‘is simply a label used to help John understand Mr C’s role’. How does a misdescription help anyone, least of all an individual anxiously awaiting trial?
Those solicitors, and the caseworker at the Legal Complaints Service, appear to be unaware of the fact that in the recent past, the High Court has held in not markedly dissimilar circumstances that if Mr A goes to the office of solicitors X and asks the receptionist if he may speak to a solicitor, but is then seen by a person who does not reveal that, far from being a solicitor he is only a managing clerk, then even if the advice and assistance given by the clerk is impeccable and was no different to what a solicitor would have said and done, the solicitor’s firm X cannot recover one penny of their costs because Mr A sought the services of a solicitor and, intentionally or not, he has been deceived.
The courts take deception very seriously; so should others. That the deception should, in the case reported in ‘A Disturbing Tale’, have continued up to the end of a court hearing is disgraceful. That the Legal Complaints Service thought nothing of it suggests that those like myself, who have often found them an inadequate organisation, sometimes as grossly unfair to a solicitor as on another occasion to a client, are correct. Try telling that to those who control the Legal Complaints Service or try arguing them out of an impossibly illogical position and you will be faced with total incomprehension. The Law Society’s Ethics Department will agree with you that a solicitor who, against the interests of clients, knowingly takes on more work than he can handle in a reasonable time is behaving improperly. The Legal Complaints Service and the Solicitors Regulation Authority demonstrate reluctance to deal with such a complaint. What protection therefore is there for the clients and for the multitude of solicitors who behave with complete propriety and want to see the good name of their profession preserved?
Another misleading ploy adopted is for a solicitor to write to the client saying that ‘my colleague X will attend to take your instructions’. The word ‘colleague’ implies, from its Latin origin, someone of equal status. Why not say that one’s clerk will attend, unless the solicitor seeks to encourage a mistaken idea?
A Judge quite recently complained of the standard of some Higher Courts Advocates in his court and this was followed by an agonised protest that he was being unfair. Why?
I too have come across a Higher Courts Advocate who had failed (as in Complaint 3 highlighted by Eric McGraw) to raise an available defence in law with the jury. When later challenged as to why, he explained that he had thought that a lie told by his client about another aspect of defence (and it was a particularly silly lie which ultimately sank him) precluded putting forward the defence made available by statute. An innocent defendant - and some are - has enough hurdles to jump without incompetent representation.
Deception as to status is one thing. Solicitor Higher Court Advocates, faced with a more than usually determined lay client who wants to be represented by Counsel, will sometimes deploy arguments which do not accord with the facts. I recently saw a letter to a client which amounted to character assassination of Counsel, making a series of wild assertions commencing with criticism which could not be true since the firm had never had any dealings with or experience of the barrister in question. They concluded that the course advised by Counsel was ‘doomed to failure’. The client, more than usually determined, insisted and the opposition to the instruction of Counsel crumbled. Is this sort of situation in the lay client’s best interest? Plainly not, but until someone cracks down hard on the culprits it seems destined to continue.
What is described here and in ‘A Disturbing Tale’ is as troublesome whether it arises from a Crown Court trial or from Parole Review proceedings. That the Parole Board is now weakened by the removal of the requirement for its panels to be chaired by Judges and has become, in some cases, over-cautious in the releasing of prisoners or of recommending transfer to Category D, makes the position for the post-trial prisoner even worse. To argue, for example, that one drink taken after seven years abstinence indicates inability to control the intake of alcohol would make the symbolic ‘man on the Clapham Omnibus’ shake with laughter. But that sort of argument is regularly deployed. It has to stop or be stopped if justice is not only to be done, but be seen to be done.
The conduct of what is, one hopes, a few solicitors and of the Parole Board in its changing attitude, coupled with unreasonable Legal Service Commission requirements for training solicitors already adequately experienced before, for example, conducting another parole case are a burden to a profession which has not seen its legal aid fees rise for 10 years. The pathetically administered regulation bodies make matters worse for the client and the innocent hardworking solicitor. It is time to get rid of the dead wood and bureaucracy in every quarter and to allow solicitors and barristers who care for justice before profit to get on with their work unhindered.
* Stanley Best is a practising barrister at Barnstaple Chambers and Chairman of the British Legal Association. Tel/Fax/Answerphone: 01837 83763
Progress is threatened by cuts
Conservatives ‘want change’
All-white juries do not discriminate
Unexpected ‘special’ Legal Visits
Influenced by inner anger
250 prison teaching jobs to go
Petition to make trainee psychologists answerable to a higher body
Month by Month
Methadone concerns
Double invisibility
Twice the punishment
The forgotten victims
The best brains?
Doing Things Differently
Public persona … private person
Proactive progression
The inside story
POCA’s furry feline friends
Current page: Supporting evidence
Prosecuting Serious Fraud
Transfers from prisons to mental health units
War Torn
Cycles of the Planets
PSO Watch - It's political
insidetime
|
|
Issue : September 2010
Back Issues
Browse and Search Tools
View headlines by category
Search headlines | All headlines
Search mailbag | All mailbag
Search poems | All poems
September 2010 Headlines
£2bn Cuts
Guilty until proven innocent - historic cases
Prison psychologists - biased practitioners
What’s in your file?
Abuse of Process
Parole woes!
Recent developments in The Law of Confiscation
Month by Month
My Precious
Halden Prison, the stuff of dreams
The lamp must still burn
Sentencing review: what’s it all about?
‘Shout OXO’ before you die
What’s a ‘psychopath’, a ‘DSPD’ and should Peter Sutcliffe ever be released?
The innocence of prisoners’ children
Your Children Your Rights
The rules are simple, choose your own loophole
Lie detector tests and you
Rule 39 Correspondence - guidance
About Us
About insidetime
Directors
Editorial Team
InsidePoetry Book
The
insidepoetry book
is a collection of 213 poems by 202 prisoners of all backgrounds.
Availabe to buy from this site!
Subscribe
You can subscribe to insidetime Newspaper and get the paper each month delivered to your door!
Advertise
Advertise your business or solicitors office to a highly defined target audience.
Other Publications
Inside Time has produced a number of books and publications you can purchase online.
Contact Us
All contact info for the Operations office and the Editorial Team.
Site Map
Our site map page contains links to all pages on the insidetime site.
External Links
These links open external websites which you may be interested.
WikiCrimeLine
Banks On Sentence
insideinformation
Prisons
Everything you need to know about visiting people in prison; procedures, opening times, directions etc.
Comprehensive information about each prison regime; lock down times, facilities, healthcare etc.
insideinformation Book
Help and Support
Various pages of information for help and support organisations and networks for those in custody as well as recently released. Also information for friends and family.
Grants and Funding
This grants and funding pdf document aims to meet the need of prisoners and ex-offenders for accurate, up to date information on the supplementary funding available to prisoners.
Rules and Regulations
Information on rules & regulations used throughout the prison service.
Glossary of Terms
The Glossary of Prison Related Terms explains what all the acronyms and terms stand for with prison related matters. Includes links to external sites to further explain things.
Fact Sheets
We have produced many Prison Related Fact Sheets inc. Legal Fact Sheets, Parole Fact Sheets and Other related information.
Find a Solicitor
You can search our solicitor database for listings of solicitors in your area that provide the services you require.
Address Finder
You can search our address database in many ways to retrieve contact information for all those elusive addresses you need in a hurry.
Prison Law pdf
This document provides details of leading training providers who offer sound professional training.
Other Publications
Inside Information has produced a number of books and publications you can purchase online.
Site Map
Our site map page contains links to all pages on the insideinformation site.
Contact Us
Use the Contact Us Feedback form to send us suggestions, plus our address and phone numbers.