Chancery Lane Chats By cover art

Chancery Lane Chats

By: Montfort Communications
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  • Summary

  • The Montfort Communications team explore how reputation management plays a crucial part in determining who is the ‘right winner’ or the ‘wronged loser’ in high profile litigation. Chancery Lane Chats features interviews with leading lawyers, journalists and business leaders who have found themselves at the centre of a dispute. They all have one thing in common: a perspective which can deliver insights into why litigation communication matters. Tune in to our office on the junction where Fleet Street and Chancery Lane meet in the heart of London, as we explore the intersection of law, journalism and crisis management. For more information, visit https://montfort.london/
    © Montfort Communications
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Episodes
  • Judge Rob Rinder and Jeremy Brier on the Importance of Legal Aid

    Judge Rob Rinder and Jeremy Brier on the Importance of Legal Aid
    Dec 14 2021
    Jeremy is a leading Senior Junior at the Commercial Bar and is a member of Essex Court Chambers. He specialises in complex and heavy commercial litigation, including insurance, banking and funds, all aspects of commercial fraud, shipping, and international arbitration. In 2020, Jeremy was the lead Junior for Arch in Financial Conduct Authority v Arch, the test case on business interruption losses resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. Since 2018, he has also sat as a Recorder of the Crown Court.Rob was called to the Bar in 2001 and went on to specialise in cases involving international fraud, money laundering and other forms of financial crime. Since 2014, he has been the eponymous judge in the reality courtroom series Judge Rinder and has also written a legal based discussion column in The Sun. He also came fifth in the fourteenth series of Strictly Come Dancing.Jeremy and Rob's experiences as judgesFrom a young age, Jeremy had always wanted to be a criminal barrister, and when he’d accrued enough experience as a commercial barrister, he applied, and was appointed, as a part-time judge - known as a recorder. “And then you learn on the job. You get training, you do get very good training, actually. But you also have to go and do a lot of sitting in with all the judges, quite a lot of observing and watching.”While you don't always see the impact the criminal Legal Aid cuts are having on the front line in the court, says Jeremy, what is being seen is a rise in the number of people who are representing themselves. The issue with this is they simply don’t understand the law procedure in the way that trained counsel do.The importance of Legal Aid Legal Aid, says Jeremy, has always been a problematic area for the government. They haven’t been able to sell it to the public because people tend to see it as footing the bill for criminals. But Legal Aid isn’t just for crime. It’s vital in areas like immigration and asylum cases. “Legal Aid is actually incredibly important, indeed, fundamental to a democratic and functioning legal system under the rule of law.”When the Legal Aid and Advice Act came in 1949, about 80% of the country was covered. That has subsequently dropped to about 27% of people who were eligible by 2007. And now, under the latest reforms, there are only very small numbers of specific cases that can get funding. But, says Rob, Legal Aid represents everything. “It's about access to justice, without access to justice, there is no rule of law. And without the rule of law, our democracy is meaningless, simple as. But what governments have failed to do, or even us as lawyers, is to personalise it to give really good quality examples of how critical and how important it is, and to make it relevant to individuals.”And Rob has had significant first hand experience of people who desperately need Legal Aid, but for whom access to justice is completely beyond their grasp. The problem, says Rob, is that one - we have access to legal advice because we have money to pay for it as well the connections to help. Two -  we can speak to power without fear. And three - we have the capacity and the resources to ensure that the law is executed on our behalf. That in itself is a privilege. “And for millions of our neighbours, even in the communities we all live in. That's just not part of their reach. And when we sit back and reflect on who we are as a nation, that's not just a problem. It says something deeply worrying about our nation.”The misunderstanding of Legal Aid“I think one of the reasons, historically, is that for some reason, Legal Aid has been synonymous in the public mind, whether through the reporting of it or otherwise, as being some sort of fund for criminals.”There’s a misunderstanding that what's happening is that all of these undeserving murderers, rapists, and thieves are somehow dipping into the public purse to employ clever barristers to get them off crimes. And that couldn't be further from the truth. First of all, says Jeremy, an incredible number of people are innocent of the crimes or wrongdoings they’re accused of. And that's possibly the most important protection of liberty we have as a civilised society - to give innocent people the right to defend themselves. But also, everyone is entitled to a defence. And that is a fundamental right, just like access to the NHS or the education system.How to improve the image of Legal AidCameras in court would in no way shape or form help the public understand the significance of Legal Aid, says Rob. “Look, we're lawyers and we know something which the public doesn't, which is most court cases, even criminal ones are incredibly boring.”What we need to do, Rob continues, as a legal community, is think about ways to broaden our capacity and reach into communities that don’t have access to justice.“We need to think of more corporately creative ways about how we are privileged with time, to ensure that we ...
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    44 mins
  • Clarissa Coleman & David Speakman of DAC Beachcroft On The Changing Role of Investigations Lawyers

    Clarissa Coleman & David Speakman of DAC Beachcroft On The Changing Role of Investigations Lawyers
    Nov 23 2021
    Clarissa Coleman moved straight into litigation on qualifying. As well as several other positions, she spent 2 years in-house as Head of Litigation at Consensus Business Group (CBG), the property investment firm owned by businessman Vincent Tchenguiz. Today she’s a partner in the Complex Commercial Litigation and Disputes group at DAC Beachcroft’s London office.“Litigation is different. It's a different mindset. It's about clients and people and every case is different. The facts are different, the stories are different. It's constantly challenging and different and exciting.”David Speakman is a senior employment law specialist based at DAC Beachcroft’s London office too. He has considerable experience advising on contentious matters before the Employment Tribunal and High Court, regularly advising on high-profile disputes and discrimination issues.The dawn raidDuring her 2 years as in-house as Head of Litigation at CBG, Clarissa dealt with multi-million pound commercial disputes and a high profile dawn raid and fraud investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, following the collapse of Kaupthing Bank in Iceland. “I dashed into the office. I'd done some dawn raid training. And, as expected, everyone totally ignored all my training. So I was the only one who followed my own training.”Clarissa co-ordinated the response on the morning of the dawn raid and arrest of Tchenguiz, and planned the subsequent judicial review against the SFO, which later dropped its investigation and settled with Tchenguiz for an undisclosed amount.Reputation managementAfter the raid, there were 1,350 negative press articles about Vincent and his brother, meaning PR was vital to him getting his message out there that he wasn’t in the wrong. “When we were planning our strategy, one of the biggest issues was an allegation of conspiracy between Vincent and his brother, because it's very hard to disprove allegations of conspiracy.”The SFO put their warrant together so quickly, it was full of mistakes and misinformation, and this was key to getting the press onside. “Bringing the press onside and working within the power of the press became an important part of our strategy and actually meant that the SFO had to drop all their charges.”WhistleblowingDavid was involved in a very high profile case himself, an employment whistleblower case. Dr Kevin Beatt was sacked by Croydon's NHS Trust for whistleblowing over concerns about patient safety. “I think it's a really important case about whistleblowing, clearly, because it went to the Court of Appeal and has now confirmed the law on whistleblowing. But I think it is really important as a tale to explain why an investigation into the underlying issues is vitally important.”Problems arise because so many people use whistleblowing as a way to raise a grievance or a difficulty, making it a very contentious and complicated area. Wider cultural influences on the UK workforceThe workplace isn’t just somewhere you work, it can be extended to any time, anywhere you’re with work colleagues, even in a social context. When you’re with work colleagues, there’s a certain standard of behaviour that just isn’t acceptable. Employment law supports this and sees the workplace as being far wider than just the office.“The #metoo social media phenomena means that people feel empowered to speak out. Whereas 20 years ago, people felt they couldn't speak out, because they would have been blacklisted for their career.”DAC Beachcroft multi-disciplinary investigations department“We realised as a firm, that we've got a huge amount of investigators experience and a huge amount of litigation experience, but also that that experience is in a lot of cases, quite specific, as well as generic.”Their team is currently speaking to schools, to independent schools, universities, and carrying out investigations into sexual misconduct in schools. “We take a strategic approach. It's a bit like the Vincent story again. You don't just follow a path, at the very start, you take all the expertise you have as a firm and look at this question and say, ‘What is the best way to approach it?’ ‘Who has the real skills that can deal with this?’ ‘Can we think outside the box a little so that we can provide solutions?’”Discussed in this podcast episode:The dawn raid Reputation managementThink about privilege from the outsetWhistleblowingThe FCA’s 6th question on D&ICareer advice for new lawyersLinksClarissa ColemanDavid SpeakmanDAC Beachcroft LLPhttps://montfort.london/https://montfort.london/our-team/
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    28 mins
  • Tracy Alexander on the Current State of UK Forensic Services

    Tracy Alexander on the Current State of UK Forensic Services
    Sep 29 2021
    Tracy Alexander is the Director of Forensic Services for the City of London police. Tracy has worked in forensic science for 29 years, 17 years of which were spent within the Directorate of Forensic Services at New Scotland Yard, as Crime Scene Manager for the Homicide Command, and latterly as Head of Forensic Intelligence. Tracy is an advisory panel member and trustee of Inside Justice, a fellow of King's College London, and the current president of the British Academy of Forensic Sciences. From classics to forensicsTracy fell into forensics entirely by accident when she saw an advert at New Scotland Yard looking for people interested in becoming fingerprint experts. “I thought, that sounds good. And my parents would be so proud. Essentially, at that time forensic science consisted mostly, if you're thinking about biometric data, it was entirely around fingerprints.”The biggest changes in forensicsThe biggest change came in 1995 with the instigation of the DNA database. “The concept of being able to use that kind of biometric data in order to identify somebody at a crime scene was, I mean I hate the phrase, but it was a complete game changer.”The idea of being able to identify an individual by something unique to them, i.e. a fingerprint, had been around since 1897 when it was first used in Argentina, but the introduction of the DNA database meant identifying a person, and having their name available as part of an investigation for intelligence, or as part of a trial. About 10% of the UK population is on the DNA and fingerprint database, the biggest per capita database in the world. But has it had an impact on how crimes are investigated or how forensic services are run in the UK?“I love my police investigative colleagues to death, but they do rely on there being forensic leads a lot. And I know in other countries they don't, they're expected to pursue all leads, do your house to house inquiries, pursue the CCTV and all of the other things that you would normally do.”While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, says Tracy, forensic services in the UK were privatised a long time ago, and that in itself has influenced how the work is carried out. Because it’s now a case of doing how much you can afford to. The decline of forensic expertsIn 2012 when the coalition government closed the UK Forensic Science Service (FSS), one of the biggest impacts in the forensic science space was the reduction in the number of different experts that were available to police forces across the UK. “There are fibre experts in the UK, but they don't work for a company because companies won't pay to have them on the books.”The portrayal of forensic scientists by hit tv shows like Line of Duty are hugely misleading, because you simply can’t pop to the nearest lab and have a bit of rope examined, for example. TV portrayal of forensic scientistsWhile some TV shows are inaccurate about what forensic science is capable of, Tracy did learn from Rizzoli and Isles, an American forensic science show, that you can age blood. She’s also a fan of Amanda Burton in Silent Witness, although she says, as a forensic scientist, you simply can’t do all the work she does. “Amanda Burton can talk to the witnesses, she can comfort the victim's family, she can do the post mortem, she can examine the scene. [But] it's one of those unattainable things, you can't do all of those bits and bobs in just one hour all by yourself.” Investigating digital and cybercrimeIn Tracy’s current role, she’s involved in investigating digital and cybercrime, which she says, isn’t complicated by the complexities of the data, more so, it’s the sheer volume of data they have to deal with that slows them down. And there’s no budget to use machine learning, or AI, or any new technologies to wade through the massive volumes of data to uncover patterns or read through key documents. They can’t even hire more people. “We do an awful lot with what we've got. I turn out 30 terabytes of data a month. All of that data is actively used in prosecutions every single day. We're juggling tonnes of data in order to make sure that people are being prosecuted as best they can, on a daily basis. But it's not enough.”Inside JusticeTracy also sits on the advisory panel for the charity, Inside Justice, which investigates miscarriages of justice. “The joy of forensic science is that it does give you the truth of the matter. We shouldn't be an expert witness on one side or the other. It should just be looking at the evidence. And see where it leads you.”Tracy’s Montfort MaximWhat advice does Tracy give to anyone interested in embarking on a career in forensic science?“I would definitely work on a prime science. Pick a specialism and be very, very good at that. And then potentially go and work somewhere else, maybe in the Netherlands, because they all speak English, and it's all government funded. Really learn your trade and then ...
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    33 mins
Management Economics
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