Internet Newsletter for Lawyers |
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We have specialist practice groups covering criminal and public law, tribunals
and inquiries, family law, civil dispute resolution, business and enterprise,
alternative dispute resolution and international work. A wide range of cases is
dealt with.
Management of chambers is through Heads of Chambers, Chambers Manager
and Senior Clerk. The barristers are thereby free of involvement in chambers
committee meetings. This can be seen as a major advantage! Joint Heads of
Chambers are Sir Nicholas Bonsor Bt and Tim Wallis.
Chambers is fully constituted and approved by the Bar Council. Members may
be full members working exclusively for BarristerWeb or dual members with
another chambers. They may also be a sole practitioner running their own
practice independently of BarristerWeb. Dual members can supplement their
practice by taking additional work from BarristerWeb. Full members have to be
more than three years call, as an internet chambers cannot provide the face to
face mentoring required for under three year call barristers and pupils, although
they can be dual members with mentoring provided by their primary chambers.
The flexibility of the internet structure also allows us to administer other
chambers where the members also become members of BarristerWeb. For
example Palmyra Chambers in Warrington are part of the BarristerWeb Group;
their telephones are answered by BarristerWeb and all their practice is
administered through BarristerWeb.
Not having to pay a fixed monthly charge for overheads enables barristers doing
other (non-legal) work to continue with their part-time practice at the Bar. Some
of our part-time practitioners include mothers with family commitments, law
lecturers, a tax advisor, a pharmacist, a doctor of medicine and a member who
sits 2-3 days a week with a judicial appointment on a tribunal.
Clients can search through the website to find a barrister online. Searches can
be by barrister’s name, area of law or location. Clients include solicitors, local
authorities, legal departments, insurance companies, licensed access and public
access clients. Instructions are accepted by telephone, post, DX or fax or
through the website.
We market our chambers and our barristers through the website, through being
in the legal directories (including The Legal 500) and through advertising in the
Courts and Agency Directory, Waterlows and LawyerLocator. We are also an
accredited chambers for CPD lectures and a number of our barristers are
regular lecturers.
Conference facilities are available at chambers or at local professional clients’
offices or at serviced offices available for hire. For example, Regus,
www.regus.co.uk, can provide outsourced offices at 90 prime locations across
the UK and many others abroad.
Papers are generally sent to barristers direct and many have personal DX
boxes. Efax is particularly helpful, www.efax.co.uk,, especially for late
instructions. 100 pages received at 6 pm for a case the following day is faxed
in the normal way by solicitors to our efax telephone number but instead of
being printed out on our fax machine (far from where the barrister happens to
be) it arrives on the clerk’s computer and is then emailed to the barrister for him
or her to receive directly. This saves paper as well as time.
Textanywhere, www.textanywhere.net, is useful. We type text on the computer,
such as the details of a case we are trying to cover, and can text it
simultaneously to as many of our barristers as we wish, simply by ticking an
onscreen box next to each barrister’s name and mobile number.
We use conference calls to save travel time and cost for barristers in specialist
groups to discuss projects. We have used Premier Conferencing,
www.premconf.com, but a cheaper option is LegalTx, www.legaltx.com. As well
as lower cost calls and line rentals there are free “legal to legal” calls which, as
more lawyers join the network, will reduce the overall office telephone bills.
Another useful communication tool we have been experimenting with is Groove,
www.groove.net, from D2i. Groove is a virtual office with desktop collaboration
software for secure discussions, file-sharing, projects and meetings. There are
many possible uses for this system. For example, our bookkeeper works from
home and we can share information in a secure workspace and see online
updated information as it is entered. A barrister can keep all precedents,
templates and case law in another secure workspace, which can be accessed
over the internet. New workspaces can be created to give access to designated
persons, for example, an instructing solicitor could access the document online
to collaborate on drafts. We can also see a use where barristers wish to return
papers at short notice to colleagues in chambers; instead of having to courier
or fax them they can be accessed from a workspace and printed off. If solicitors,
the CPS and other major providers used the system it could speed delivery of
briefs.
We are looking at the challenges of Quality Mark for an internet chambers. On
the one hand, with the Treasury driving down costs with competitive tendering,
our concept is attractive to the Legal Services Commission. On the other hand,
where barristers are dual members as well as being geographically distant, it
may be more difficult to show that they are complying with required standards.
We may therefore discuss having a separate Quality Marked team within
chambers.
Neil Goodman-Smith is Chambers Manager of BarristerWeb,
www.barristerweb.com.
He was formerly a solicitor in private practice, a counsel
with the Hong Kong Government and a solicitor in the Criminal Appeals Office
at the Royal Courts of Justice. He founded BarristerWeb in 2001 together with
senior Clerk Andrew Hutchins.
Email neilgs@barristerweb.com.
Back to Contents.
Chambers Without Walls
BarristerWeb, www.barristerweb.com, was established in 2001 to provide
solicitors and other professionals with easy and cost-effective access to a wide
range of legal expertise throughout England and Wales. It has proven to be a
success and is now one of the largest sets of barristers chambers in the country.
BarristerWeb has over 80 barristers and offers the services of a traditional
chambers but with barristers spread across different geographical locations and
accessible globally over the internet. The opportunity to use that expertise on
advisory matters has also become available to the public generally.
By Neil Goodman-Smith
Management and structure
Our administrative offices are in Milton Keynes, but the barristers are located
nationwide or indeed overseas. They do not pay any rent and they pay only a
small annual licence fee for the software. They contribute to the running of
chambers by payment of commission on work received and managed for them,
with tapering rates for high earners.Software and online tools
The barristers are able to link to the latest Chambers Management Software,
Inquisita Law, www.inquisita.com, to which many of the leading sets of
chambers are now changing because of its power and ease of use. As a
Microsoft.net product it enables barristers with their own username and
password to access their diary and fee information over the internet. They can
also enter their own tasks, holidays, or bookings from other chambers so as to
give a clear picture of their availability.The future
We think the virtual chambers is here to stay as there is no need to maintain
expensive premises when conferences can be managed at solicitors’ offices or
rooms rented at serviced offices and libraries can be obtained online.