Trowsdale: There has to be an easier way
An online platform which allows solicitors to see barristers’ availability, making it easier to instruct them at short notice, has attracted its first paying barrister clients.
Jack Trowsdale, co-founder of Clerked, said the platform was built to “assist and enhance” barristers’ clerks, not to replace them.
Mr Trowsdale, an experienced paralegal and road transport law specialist, said the idea for Clerked came to him when he was acting for professional drivers charged with driving offences.
“It was quite difficult to find a barrister in three or four days for a Friday afternoon hearing in the middle of nowhere. I would search on Google for chambers in the area, going from website to website.
“Clerks would say to me ‘I’m really sorry, Jack, they’re not available’, and it was back to Google, with no idea who was available. I thought there had to be an easier way.”
Clerked, which he launched this summer with co-founder and technology specialist Sean Gibson, integrates with barristers’ Outlook diaries and uses AI to interpret availability, with filters for expertise, experience and location.
Solicitors do not pay to use the service, which is funded by monthly fees from barristers to be featured on the platform. The platform does not allow solicitors to contact barristers directly and instead connects them with the relevant clerk.
Mr Trowsdale said 38 barristers from a dozen chambers were live on Clerked, including a KC, with 10 more being onboarded this week. Solicitors from over 30 different law firms were using the platform.
Clerked was now “generating income”, as the first barristers came off their free 90-day trials and all of them were being retained.
Mr Trowsdale said a barrister who joined Clerked on Tuesday had just appeared at Central London County Court.
He began his legal career at the age of 16, working in the post room of a conveyancing law firm near Stockport.
He went on to work in motor transport law for JMW, Freeman & Co, DWF and Kennedys – where he was the lead for road traffic regulation – ending up as a senior associate at JMW in Manchester. He specialised in road transport and motoring law, representing haulage companies.
Having had the idea of developing a service to help solicitors instruct barristers more easily, he shared it with Mr Gibson, who played in the same cricket team. Mr Gibson had been working as vice president of operations at airport lounge network DragonPass. They are joint owners of Clerked, in equal shares.
Mr Trowsdale then spoke to “a lot of clerks, barristers and solicitors to find out their pain points and appetite for something like this”.
He went on: “We’re not looking to disrupt the industry, we’re trying to make clerks’ lives easier. Clerks remain in control of the diary and of fees. It’s a lead generation platform.
“We can’t replace the human element of clerking and the ability to determine if a brief is right for a particular barrister.”