When I was considering a career at the Bar a good piece of advice I was given was have a look at everything, as it's only when you've had a look at everything that you will know what's really for you. I dutifully followed this advice and had a look at clinical negligence, personal injury, property law and even spent a day in the Technology and Construction Court. And, with all due respect to those that practise there, it was 5 hours I can still count even now. I realised, many years later, that the mistake I had made was not to shadow that day Paul Darling KC, a man who could bring humour and life to a reading of the telephone directory.
Being a barrister is in lots of ways a very strange job. One of the things that is strange about it is that all barristers bear the same job title but, like doctors, they can spend their working lives doing utterly different things. As different as an astronaut's job is to a deep sea diver's.
Because of my instant awareness that I was neither technological nor especially constructive I never encountered Paul in court. Nor can I claim that I knew him especially intimately on a social basis. Where I did know Paul was charitably. The charity in question is the Kalisher Trust and if you read the opening paragraph on its website you'll see that its aim and purpose does not obviously dovetail with Paul's professional expertise and specialism:
We believe talent comes in many forms and from all backgrounds, and that the criminal bar should reflect the society it serves. A properly diverse criminal Bar offers independent, critical thinking; the knowledge that difference should be embraced as a source of strength; and that a shared vocation for justice is a powerful impetus, uniting all those who seek a career at the criminal Bar.
However, just because Paul did not practise in crime did not mean that he failed to grasp the critical importance of having a criminal Bar that commands the respect of all because it contains the best of all, wherever they come from. Communicating that message to generation after generation of young people requires organisation, energy and money and Paul brought all three to Kalisher.
There may seem to an outsider nothing very much remarkable about a barrister lending their support to a barrister charity but I can assure you that it is not every barrister in the well-heeled reaches of the Bar that demonstrates such concern for the future of their publicly funded brothers and sisters and their commitment to the administration of justice.
That commitment to public legal education is something that Paul really devoted himself to this year in his role as Treasurer of Middle Temple and while those of us that knew him have seen a friend cut down suddenly at no age at all there is no doubt that his Inn and its members will be feeling his loss especially keenly, so too all his colleagues at 39 Essex Chambers.
My particular link to Paul was through Dr Camilla Darling, his wife and long time linchpin of Kalisher, she can be a very persuasive lady and as the daughter of Dame Anne Rafferty that is no wonder, but Paul's devotion to the charity owed nothing to mere uxorial loyalty but a profoundly held belief that here was something that mattered and here was something that could be a real force for good. I think especially of Camilla in sharing my thoughts and so too all his family, including his brother Judge Ian Darling, who have lost a good man suddenly and unfairly.
If, as Paul Darling so profoundly did, you care that justice for the people of this country is done by those who look and sound like the people of this country you might care to make a donation in tribute to his work and memory: https://www.thekalishertrust.org/donate
