Since 2007 
Perren Buildings has been pioneering a way for solicitor advocates to work together in criminal practice. The last few years have seen solicitor advocates emerging as a significant presence in the Crown Courts, but we recognised that traditional firms do not necessarily offer the right support and career opportunities to Crown Court advocates. At the same time whilst wanting to have the economies of scale, mutual support and benefits of joint practice we had neither the desire nor the ability to emulate traditional barristers’ chambers in other respects.
Instead we operate as a collective of advocates sharing work, training and facilities, while remaining separately regulated and insured as solicitors in firms or sole practice. Those who are in sole practice are freelance advocates who no longer work as litigators, while those who belong to the seven firms associated with Chambers also spend some time as litigators and managers within their firms. We have a shared office and conference facility at 15 Old Bailey, but many of us spend more time in court and our respective offices around the South East.
Sharing work
Sharing work manifests in two ways: First, we obviously help our instructing solicitors to direct each brief to an advocate who is undoubtedly appropriate for the case. However, we go further in endeavouring to look collectively at the available advocacy work which is sent into Chambers, and we make a point of encouraging solicitors to direct briefs in ways which enable us to share advocacy opportunities amongst our members and to foster the experience and personal development of each one. This creates a very large pool of work for different levels of experience. We have taken on very serious work – terrorism, murder, complex frauds, prison disturbances – but we also have a large volume of ordinary Crown Court cases such as thefts, assaults and public order. This solves the problem of the in-house advocate who may have to wait some time for a case to come along that is at the right level for them.
Second, each advocate is able to rely on others to help with listing clashes that arise from trials going into warned lists in the Crown Court. For example, last month, I found myself on a Friday afternoon with three trials due to start on Monday morning. I retained one and the two others were taken on by my colleagues.
This kind of work-sharing is greatly assisted by scanners and email. Traditionally barristers’ chambers relied on the fact that everyone would all collect in the same place at the end of the day, so that if one person needed to take over another person’s case, it would simply be a matter of handing over the papers. As we spend most of our time spread across the South East, we rely heavily on emailing PDF documents.
Sharing training
We are not simply a collective of advocates, but a mutually supportive advocacy unit. As well as central direction, assistance and support, we set great store by regular get-togethers. Since we do not all gather in the same office on a daily or even weekly basis, residential training is the glue holding us together. We hold overnight training three or four times a year, in addition to regular social get-togethers and shorter training courses. This makes us better able to share knowledge and skills remotely as well. Many lawyers, myself included, are disinclined to communicate electronically if the forum is anonymous or wide-open. Our Chambers web forum is very heavily used for sharing legal questions and ideas, as well as jokes and nonsense, but that is largely because it is a closed and well-known circle.
Quality, on-your-feet advocacy training, sustained by continuous email support, has also boosted our skills and confidence and given us a sense of belonging in the Crown Court. We have had great support from the Bench, quite a number of whom have come to join our residential training, which also helps us feel at home. By contrast, other advocates sometimes appear ill at ease in the Crown Court. Advocacy relies heavily on presenting a confident front, and it is easier to appear confident when you have confidence in your skills.
Sharing facilities
15 Old Bailey is a shared resource for conferences with clients, training and “hot-desking”. For regulatory reasons we cannot keep files there and have to be careful about confidentiality and conflicts, so we use personal laptops and the wifi network to access documents remotely. (This is also why we do not have a shared server and our shared IT is limited to our email forum and website.)
For freelance advocates the office is invaluable for client contact, but even for those who have conference rooms at their firm as well, it is a very convenient address, a bolt hole in the centre of the capital.
Our support staff are not all based at 15 Old Bailey, and in fact we work with support staff in all our connected firms. This means there is no single chain of line management and we have to develop bilateral connections as well as group networks. One member of chambers may rely heavily on a secretary based within his firm to organise his diary, his papers and his billing, while another member of chambers may have a costs clerk but no secretary. Freelance advocates may rely on Chambers support staff as our main port of call, but others may communicate less often and less directly. We all have to be prepared to adapt our approach and methods, depending on who we are dealing with.
Our hybrid, flexible structure is our strength. It works well for criminal advocates and could work well in other practice areas where solicitors conduct much of their own advocacy.
We are not a “virtual firm”, nor even a “virtual chambers”. We are simply a new kind of chambers, which supports each member’s career in a slightly different way so that each of us can make what we will of the fellowship and opportunities on offer.
Flora Page is a trial advocate with Perren Buildings, 15 Old Bailey, and has a wide-ranging Crown Court practice. She is also a Senior Lecturer for the College of Law, where she teaches criminal law, evidence and advocacy. Flora is on the committee of the Solicitors’ Association of Higher Court Advocates and chairs their Training Sub-Committee.
