Beer: Small teams beat big teams
Being on the barrister team for public inquiries can “stifle career development” despite the prestige if there is little actual advocacy involved, according to the head of the Post Office inquiry team.
Jason Beer KC said having all counsel on the team undertake advocacy was “good for the inquiry, good for the counsel team and good for me”.
Writing about the experience for the Bar Council’s magazine, the head of 5 Essex Chambers explained that there were 300 witnesses over two years.
“It was important that a range of voices, and styles, was heard (we had a roughly equal balance on the inquiry team – three men and four women).
“I believed that it was essential that all members of the counsel team were active advocates in the inquiry.
“Although being a member of the counsel to the inquiry team is sometimes regarded as prestigious, it can in fact stifle career development (especially if the role is restricted to back-office functions, like disclosure management – and I have seen that role being performed in some inquiries by a disproportionately high number of people with childcaring responsibilities).”
Mr Beer said he was “very pleased to see similar sentiments expressed” in a November 2023 statement issued by the Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Carr, and the heads of divisions.
At last year’s Bar conference, Baroness Carr again urged senior barristers to give their junior counsel chances to speak in court, both for their own development and the future diversity of the judiciary.
Mr Beer added that he agreed with the late Edmund King QC that “small teams beat big teams”.
He said: “Our counsel team was rather smaller than the teams of some of the core participants. It allowed us to develop a strong esprit de corps, enabled nimble working practices and encouraged a broad understanding of all of the evidence (rather than becoming a specialist in a niche area of the inquiry).”
The inquiry was livestreamed on YouTube and the silk described the comments, and commentary, by members of the public on the way he conducted himself as “revelatory”.
He explained: “First, they seem surprised that courtesy was shown to all witnesses, irrespective of the evidence they were giving. Second, surprise was also expressed at the apparent patience shown to witnesses, even when it seemed that a witness may not be answering a question asked of them.
“Third, the public was interested to see that examination of witnesses (in the context of this inquiry) involves methodically and systematically going through a large volume of documentary material in order carefully to test and probe the account given by a witness – this is something which we obviously all do with witnesses on a daily basis, up and down the country, but the public seemed mildly shocked to understand that the process was as forensic as this.
“I think that this says something about a gap in the understanding of the public as to the work that we do in court. So, I think that the inquiry may have helped to show people what barristers do day in and day out.”
