How have the roles of senior clerk and chief executive changed/evolved during your time in chambers?
Roles have had to evolve in response to the changes in the commercial environment in which barristers’ chambers operate. I started my career in the early 1980s and at that time there were no titles such as CEO. The head of clerking/administration was ‘The Senior Clerk’. However, the modern business world is increasingly complex and in the leading commercial sets we deal with larger clients, across the world, often on larger matters, and against a background of changing technology that has created a culture of 24-hour working.
This shift has required chambers to grow and develop while investing in more advanced systems and processes, across finance, IT, marketing, and business development. There is also a need for a greater level of governance reflecting doing business in a more complex legal and regulatory landscape. This creates more management challenges to which senior staff and roles have had to respond.
What skills does the modern clerk require to progress in chambers?
Clerking has always required a broad range of skills from effective administration to great people management skills as well as an ability to be proactive about client retention and acquisition.
There is, I believe, a greater recognition that clerks do need to wear many hats and those looking to progress, and do well, need to work on a broad range of skills, particularly the ability to act as a trusted adviser to members as well as their clients. Clerks need the ability to nurture and develop those relationships effectively.
At the same time clerks have recognised specialist staff working in finance, marketing, and operations help complement the traditional administrative skills within chambers.
There is increasingly more movement of barristers and clerks between sets. What do you put this down to?
This phenomenon isn’t peculiar to barristers’ chambers. It’s a feature of the wider professional world. Fewer solicitors, for example, join one firm for life and there is more movement between firms and in-house legal teams in a way that there really wasn’t when I started in chambers 30 years ago.
There are lots of reasons for this increased movement. Much of it a reflection of the more globally competitive markets in which we are all operating and a demand for more specialist practice area expertise. Sets will evolve and change shape to better serve clients and take advantage of commercial opportunities.
For barristers one key driver for the increased movement is the divide between the specialist and non-specialist sets has widened. Specialist practitioners in non-specialist sets believe their practice will grow and develop more rapidly if they move to specialist sets. For clerks, as chambers have developed so have the requirements for successful and effective management. I have seen, therefore, a corresponding escalation in the war for talent. Good clerks are in demand.
What advice would you give to a set considering bringing in a CEO?
It entirely depends why a set feels it needs to create a specific CEO role. Sets need to think what they are trying to achieve strategically and what additional skills a CEO might bring to help get a chambers to where they want to be. I would also strongly recommend that chambers involve the senior clerk in the process as their buy-in will greatly enhance the prospects of the new CEO succeeding in the new role.
The size and demands of the modern chambers require a more defined structure with the need to clarify responsibilities between clerking and administration. Bringing in an external CEO may be right for a set, alternatively they may look creatively at the roles and people they have, look at bolstering operational management rather than executive management.
One needs to be aware of the particular nature of the chambers set up – it’s not the chambers or service company that provides the legal services, it’s the self-employed members. CEOs new into chambers can find it difficult to adapt to that operating model. They can also underestimate the importance of the trusted adviser role – to the barristers as well as to clients.
There has been an upstairs-downstairs mentality in some sets. How conducive is that to working at the modern Bar? Should clerks and practice managers be seen more as ‘business partners’ rather than ‘staff’?
This dynamic is a feature of professional services firms globally where the fee-earning professionals have invested in a range of ‘support functions’ to enable them to focus on client work while delegating IT, finance, business development, and so on. It’s an effective way of operating in a world where increased complexity means no one can be an expert in everything.
Over time such support functions have matured and senior support professionals are increasingly taking a seat at the management table in chambers where they have built that trusted adviser status and relationship with members. A good example is that the chairs of the Institute of Barristers’ Clerks and the Legal Practice Management Association are now invited to take a seat at the GMC committee of the Bar Council. This was something that I fought for when I was the IBC Chairman.
Barristers work in a high-pressure environment. How can clerks best alleviate the stress members face?
Stress management is a serious topic and I would not like to imply that clerks can alone solve the problems barristers may be facing. But good clerks can take the stress off members by actively helping them to manage their workload. In addition, a good relationship with their clerking team allows members to reach out in a timely fashion when their stress levels may be rising.
What about wellbeing in the clerks’ room? How do you ensure your team stays healthy when they too are under pressure?
It is important to create an environment in which clerks can raise issues early and where acceptable standards of behaviour are clear and enforced. It also helps if problems are raised early and if everyone works effectively as a team so individuals are supported in doing their job and can call out for practical and emotional help when they need it.
How can the clerking profession become more gender and ethnically diverse?
I think that we have seen an improvement in recent years but inevitably these things take time to get to where we want to be. Sets need to make it clear that they are welcoming environments for new joiners regardless of background, gender, ethnicity, and so on, and that they actively encourage candidates from a broader range of sources. The challenge for sets is that they are relatively small enterprises and don’t all necessarily have the resource to reach out as widely as they might like to when recruiting. This is something that sets need to think about when they embark upon a recruitment process.
How would more graduates becoming clerks benefit the profession and chambers?
I think the key point is less about graduates but more about hiring good people with a range of skills. A degree isn’t necessarily going to make someone a better clerk in of itself for example. That said, it’s a positive we attract a wider range of professional skills and qualifications into clerking and other roles like operations, marketing, and finance to ensure we have the right broad mix of expertise and experience.
What practice trends are you seeing in chambers at the moment? Where is your growth coming from?
Atkin Chambers has a pre-eminent position in both domestic and international disputes whether they are handled in London or further afield. Drivers are often a reflection of external market changes like the dynamic energy market, and investments being made globally in major transport infrastructure, which is creating a high demand for barristers’ services. In terms of the geographic spread we are seeing work from, it’s an increasingly broad spread – internationally fast developing and maturing economies in Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa feature heavily.
If there was one thing you would change about the Bar/chambers model, what would it be?
Beyond continuing to invest in our staff and our client service, I am not sure I would change anything fundamental. It’s a model that is flexible and which serves to offer extremely high-quality personal service to members and their clients, while allowing chambers to manage the cost base to everyone’s benefit. The size of sets has grown over the years which is why chambers have needed to invest more in property, staffing, and technology. Some sets are further along the maturity curve with regard to their operational and infrastructure and governance structures, but generally the basic model is robust.
What are your predictions for the Bar and clerking profession over the medium to long terms?
In my opinion, clients will continue to engage the highly specialised services that the Bar offers – quality advocacy and a specialised consultative service. However, we mustn’t rest on our laurels about how we deliver the service to clients. Sets will undoubtedly need to continue to invest in people and technology to meet rising client expectations. The commercial Bar will continue to thrive so long as it adapts to the changing needs of clients. However, if chambers dilute their defining qualities in the future they will cease to add the value they do today.