Employed Bar Society

Greetings from the Middle Temple Employed Bar Society (MTEBS) which I currently chair. As you will all know, the Inn is committed to representing the interests of every member and at the last rough count, about 20% of us practise at the Employed Bar. We are a diverse bunch with about half our number employed by the Government Legal, HM Courts & Tribunals and Crown Prosecution Services. The rest of us come from a broad spectrum of organisations bringing various degrees of seniority and experience, working in government, public authorities, charities, commerce, finance, industry, solicitor law firms, and other organisations who do not work at the self-employed Bar in different roles, including in-house counsel. 

Some of us have been in self-employed practice for many years – I clocked up 37 years before accepting a role as Chief Criminal Counsel at the Financial Conduct Authority in 2017. Our previous Chair, Master Michael Jones left self-employed practice in 2009 to join the CPS in Wales as their first Senior Crown Advocate and has an enviable courtroom reputation which I can attest to as an erstwhile opponent. Our Vice-Chair Stuart Alford KC practised from 36 Bedford Row for 20 years before taking on a number of different employed roles, including a period as a United Nations Prosecutor in East Timor and Legal Advisor to the Iraq High Tribunal (Saddam Hussein trials). 

Others have arguably made more astute choices at an early stage of their career. Our outgoing Chair, Ian Brookes-Howells completed his commercial pupillage before embarking on a career that has seen him fill senior roles as an in-house commercial lawyer for several FTSE 100 companies including BT, British Gas and the Lloyds Banking Group. Fellow committee member Laurence Fry worked as a commercial lawyer in the energy industry in the UK, USA and Europe for over 30 years, as well as being admitted as an Attorney of the State Bar of California. Master Helen Mahy was Group Company Secretary and General Counsel of National Grid plc for more than 10 years, and apart from keeping the nation’s lights on, has illuminated many of our committee meetings. 

The society is charged with leading the Inn’s efforts to engage with and represent the interests of its employed membership. We were created to welcome and support employed barristers and encourage them to fully participate in the activities of the Inn, ensuring that the Inn’s membership offering is relevant to and caters for the employed Bar. We aim to do this by:

• Relevance: ensuring that initiatives, events, and opportunities provided by the Inn are relevant and accessible to employed barristers and where appropriate, specifically cater for their professional development needs, interests, and career aspirations.

• Recognition: ensuring that the Inn recognises the unique skills and achievements of its employed barrister members, and deploys these skill sets to enhance the experience of all members of the Inn.

• Reputation: improving the visibility of the employed Bar as a sector, to better educate and inspire students and self-employed practitioners as to the diverse range of opportunities at the employed Bar.

• Representation: improving the representation and visibility of employed barristers on decision-making bodies within the Inn to better reflect the employed Bar’s composition of the whole Bar.

These are all worthy aims, but it is clear that we need to increase our numbers and get more engagement from our employed members. We have previously hosted Christmas drinks, summer drinks (at time of writing we are organising the annual Employed Bar Garden Party, taking place on Tuesday 11 June 2024) and have also organised an Employed Bar Private Guest Night, where we have taken a table together among our fellow members (see picture). We hope to do this again soon. The evening was great fun and many of us were only too happy to reacquaint ourselves with a court gown over our dinner attire (though to be fair, some of us were also a little non-plussed by the prospect of wearing a musky court-torn relic). We are also in the process of setting up some seminars for later in the year, including one entitled ‘Opportunities for Career Returners and Movers at the Employed Bar’ and there are plans to organise a talk about the Post Office Horizon scandal, which will be of obvious interest to anyone involved in the conduct of private prosecutions. 

The main thing I would like to get across however is that we are a really friendly, diverse and welcoming society. It costs nothing to join us, we take full advantage of the Inn’s technology to enable virtual attendance at our quarterly meetings and we are hungry for more ideas, input and initiatives to engender our growth and value to the Inn. So please, have a look at the MTEBS page on the Inn’s website, keep an eye out for our forthcoming events – spread the word and come along. 

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