There is a not insignificant part of me that longs to have a chambers profile, sans photo and text, that simply states:
If you would like to instruct Max Hardy please telephone his clerk.
Chambers' website photographs are a very good source of entertainment if you have a lot of time to kill on a wet weekend, like a model agency's roster of talent but generally with rather less physical perfection on display. At 2004 Call I don't quite pre-date chambers websites but they were very rudimentary affairs back then and I definitely grew up schooled by barristers who themselves regarded touting as worse than blasphemy and treason rolled into one. Advertising one's services was, not all that long ago, a serious disciplinary offence and, more than that, it was just not done.
Now, however, the baby has well and truly followed the bathwater. True it is I have never encountered a barrister with personalised branded pens like those of a flamboyant Floridian defense attorney I met on the SEC Criminal Advocacy Course which boasted: 'YOU RAISE CASH. I RAISE DOUBT'. And I suppose one should be grateful that no barrister has yet resorted to advertising via sky-writing, flash mob or Oxford Street sandwich board man (although I do dimly recall some bus stop ads a few years back).
But, my learned friends, we need to talk about tone and about content also. Let me immediately acknowledge that those that live in glass houses should not throw stones and, as an occupant of a veritable crystal palace of self-promotion, perhaps I'm not best placed to sound off on this particular topic. Nonetheless, just as our journalistic friends are expected to adhere to style guides, surely the time has long since passed for the profession to discuss and agree comme il faut and how it very much is not.
When I talk to law students about pupillage applications one of my mainstays for advice is sit down with the form, identify every adjective, and then delete them. Adjectives are the friend of the estate agent but the sworn enemy of the advocate. If we boast on social media about a 'stunning acquittal' what message are we communicating to the reader - That we, in fact, had no faith in the case and were therefore astonished by its outcome? That, in our opinion, maybe the jury reached the wrong verdict? Of course those aren't the interpretations we intend, what we mean is, this result could only have been achieved by a barrister as wondrous and uniquely gifted as ourselves.
Because we never receive feedback from the primary recipients of our advocacy, namely juries, it is possible for barristers to complete a practice of 40 or even 50 years with some absolutely fundamental misapprehensions about how our routines go down with the 12 good folks and true. (By way of an aside it's why the Keble Advocacy Course is such a godsend). It is also why I balk, recoil and grimace at what has regrettably become an industry standard expression. Why is it that we have all decided to announce with fanfare on LinkedIn, Twitter and the rest that we SECURED an acquittal or we SECURED a conviction? You secure a mortgage on a tiny flat in Zone 5 because that's all Legal Aid stretches to these days. You secure your framed Certificate of Call to the wall in your downstairs [only] loo. But is it really us securing the convictions? Might it not be, instead, the evidence. After all we don't say to juries: 'You may be sure that Mr X is guilty because I have addressed you with elan, panache and brio'. Judges don't direct them to listen to the advocates and choose whose words were most beguiling and bewitching.
Maybe it's just me but if you've been in a case that has had a result that you think worth bringing to wider attention why not plainly inform your audience what the case was and that you appeared in it. And if you really have to you might add what verdict the jury reached based on their careful assessment of the evidence and the law.
Sometimes it's not just how we say it but what we say that perhaps requires a second, third and even a fourth thought. As a youngster when I was still gauche enough to talk about the day job to friends and relations they were often tolerant enough to raise a weak smile at yet another prolonged anecdote about a scallywag shoplifter. As the years have progressed I have mercifully outgrown talking shop to outsiders unless they evince a really genuine interest. But also the cases rapidly lose any sense of roguish charm. Any RASSO practitioner learns very quickly that their daily diet is quite rightly the stuff of nightmares for most people.
With that thought in mind could it be that there are certain categories of case that require especially sensitive consideration when it comes to publication on social media? We tell juries that nothing less than sure will do but there is quite the sliding scale below sure from a finding of flagrant and malicious concoction to an agonised and agonising decision that the benefit of the doubt must properly be given to the defendant even if the not guilty verdict is delivered with a genuine sense of hesitation and misgiving. Is an acquittal for a serious sexual offence in those circumstances really something to crow about?
I'm a realist, this is the world we live in now, and I wouldn't want any forensic scrutiny or even casual flick through of some of my 'announcements' held against me but if we're going to be blowing our own trumpets it's worth thinking about what tune we're playing and when.
