Barristers, language, belief and knowledge

I listened today to the BBC Radio 4 programme "Between Ourselves" (available until 2nd September on iPlayer) in which Olivia O'Leary interviewed two barristers - Nick Hilliard QC and Dexter Dias QC.

Having worked with barristers for so long, I find it interesting to hear them interviewed and to see how journalists and the world at large perceive them. Both gentlemen spoke well, but that should be no surprise for two people at the top of the advocacy profession. The presenter didn't really address the issue of the public perception of barristers, which is often that that will be tall, posh, white, and have gone to a very good school before Oxbridge. This perception can actually work against the barrister. One barrister friend, who grew up in the East end of London and certainly wasn't educated at Eton, tells the story of a disappointed client who was accused of a serious assault. My friend arrived at the detention centre to interview the client - who was massively disappointed, and said so loudly. "You can't be a proper brief, you ain't posh enough".

So there is a degree of need to allow clients (and particularly clients accused of criminal offences) to feel secure in the choice of barrister - which often involves speaking "properly". Another thing to consider, and one which was pointed out to me early in my career supporting barristers, was that the voice is the barrister's main tool. I listened to Nick Hilliard speaking and noticed that he wasn't particularly posh at all - he did, however, speak with a wonderful precision of word and expression and a clarity of diction which made what he said very clear.

I was struck, throughout the programme, by how committed both barristers seemed to the notion of justice and how little cynicism there was in their statements. This seems to be apparent throughout the profession - barristers, in general, really believe in the system and in their role as an advocate for the client. Nick (who I was lucky enough to work with at Middle Temple) made the point that the job of the defence barrister is to put the best case possible on behalf of the client. Both spoke strongly about their belief that everyone deserved the best possible defence. They articulated the difference between belief and knowledge - they may believe in the guilt of a client, but it is not their place, and must not be their place, to decide that person's fate. They do not know that their client is guilty and, for as long as he or she insists on their innocence, barristers must argue the best case for them in the best possible manner.

Of course the issue of fees was brought up. Nick was confronted with a press report that he had earned over £448k in one year. The first thing to note about this is that, as a self employed barrister, this is turnover and not salary. Barristers have to pay a noticeable share to contribute to the running of chambers and then their own expenses. That notwithstanding, Mr. Hilliard is still paid well for what he does, as he acknowledged. He is however, as is Mr. Dias, one of the best in the business. In those circumstances, and in comparison to partners in firms of solicitors or accountant, I do not thing that his remuneration is unreasonable. Look at the average Profit per Equity Partner (PEP) in the UK top 50 law firms (see here for my analysis). Even if Nick were able to keep his £448k, average PEP at many of those firms is well above that sum - and Nick is far better than an average partner. A better comparison would be a partner at the likes of Linklaters or Freshfields - both of which had average PEP of over £1million - or more than double that of a "fat cat barrister".

This posting was not intended to be a defence of the bar. I was, however, pleasantly reminded of the intelligence and commitment of good barristers - it reminded me of good committee meetings with bright people who had strong moral codes.. I enjoyed hearing both Nick and Dexter speak and felt the system was in good hands.

Dealing with bad news

Bad news. There's a lot of it about at the moment. Almost every organisation will be faced with some element of bad news - falling profits, falling turnover, redundancy, shrinking markets, more competition...

The important thing is to face the news and to be honest about it - with employees, with partners, with clients and with the press, if necessary. In the last week or so, there have been two case studies in how not to do it.

The first case is that of Cobbetts (see here for "The Lawyer" article). It has decided not to declare its profit for the year, although various articles seem to suggest that they have declared their revenue (£48.5m according, again, to "The Lawyer"). As the article points out, Cobbetts are an LLP and so their result will eventually be published. To refuse to discuss profits suggests, at best, an immaturity of thought and a lack of business leadership.

The second case was highlighted on the "Face the Facts" programmes broadcast on Sunday evening on Radio 4 (see here for iPlayer which will be able to stream the programme for 7 days after broadcast, and here for the "Face the Facts" own site). Part of the programme included an attempt to interview people working at a Job Centre Plus, a government agency aims at helping unemployed white-collar and executive staff. Rather than accept a difficult time - and acknowledge that Job Centres are their to help the many rather than the few - the agency's senior staff sent out a memo reminding staff that getting involved with the BBC could lead to their dismissal and to refusing to let the BBC record at a Job Centre Plus site. Instead they stage-managed a visit to a new, clean, calm JCP site in Ealing - which didn't seem to either please or fool the reporters at all.

In both cases the best course of action was to bite the bullet and to admit to faults. Cobbetts should have admitted a loss, said what they were doing about it and moved on. Instead they now have "The Lawyer" interested and the story is likely to run for a while as a result. JCP should have admitted that their targets and model was designed before the downturn and as a result they were dealing with the many first and were outsourcing executive recruitment (which they are). If your organisation is not doing something well, it is often the best thing to admit it.

By trying to hide from bad new or by trying to hope that it will go away, more news and interest has been generated and both organisations end up looking rather foolish.

I doubt that was the plan.

A Twitter Follow-up

Following on from my earlier post and from James' analysis of the possible use of Twitter, I was interested to read an item on the BBC's web site entitled "Twitter tweets are 40% babble".

I always enjoy seeing how statistics are used in the media - write the story first and then find or spin statistics to fit, would seem to be the prevailing methodology. Just looking at the headline. It would be possible to say "Only 40% of tweets are babble" or even "Tweet are 60% non-babble" - both of which give the story a completely different spin while imparting the same data. Looking further into the text of the piece, it is revealed that 37.5% of tweets analysed were "conversational" and that 8.7% had "value" in that they passed on "items of interest".

Given that Twitter was designed as a way of saying what you were "doing now", in other words "meaningless babble", I think that finding that 8.7% of 2,000 Tweets were valuable is pretty good. Having just returned from holiday, I'm tempted to say that less that 8.7% of my inbox was valuable (not your emails, of course - they're always valuable) and I would not be keen for anyone to measure the value in my spoken communications. I should also like to mention that the 2,000 tweets analysed were recovered over a 14 day period and, at this moment, Twitter is showing 14,564 messages are being transmitted per minute. I'm not sure how good a sample is, therefore, of only 2,000. Their methodology (available here) seems flawed to me - 200 messages per day for 10 days (working days only apparently). They offer some different analysis from their dataset - best times to Tweet etc - but I'm surprised that they seem so definite in their conclusions given how small their population was. The analysis was carried out only on US Tweets (although I'm not at all sure how they managed to identify those) and between 11am and 5pm (US time - probably CST but they don't say for sure). Not only that, but they appear to be confused about some features in Twitter - repeating the false contention that one cannot secure one's feed. I'm disappointed in the analysis (surely they had time to analyse more that 200 Tweets per day) and in the BBC's rather lazy use of it. The BBC's item ends with a note that the study will be repeated quarterly. Unless the size of the study it much enlarged, I don't think this will help much.

Would the results be different if a more full study was undertaken? I don't know - but at least we would be able to be more confident in any analysis which was undertaken.

Twitter is a social medium - one designed for ordinary people (well, tech-friendly ordinary people) to communicate. It should not be a surprise that most people do not need to say things of value. As James' post mentioned, the business use of Twitter and other social media is in its infancy. Patience, BBC, patience.

Age Discrimination

I spent rather a lot of yesterday watching the final round of the Open (golf, for those of you who care little for these things). If you watched it too perhaps you were struck at the commentary, as well as I hope, in the golf. I hope that you were taken with the drama of Tom Watson so nearly winning his 6th Open.

Time and again, commentators from the BBC referred to Tom Watson's age - stating "isn't it remarkable at his age..." and "...if he can win it at this age, it might be one of the greatest moments in sport...". Tom Watson is 59.

I found the constant references to his age to be not only an enormous distraction from the drama unfolding on the course, but to be a rather insulting suggestion that 59 was so over the top and past it that it was remarkable that he was still able to walk.

Now, I understand that it is unusual for a 59 year old to win a major - but I don't think it needs to be mentioned in every breath. Gold is unusual in that it is as much a test of nerve and concentration as it is of physical strength. Watson has tremendous experience in stressful situations and, as he admirably proved, was able to use that experience over the four days of the tournament. I'm sure that "at his advanced age" he was not able to hit the ball as far as his younger playing partners - but hitting it straight is probably a more useful skill as if the knowledge that he has hit hundreds of thousands of gall balls more than most.

Nor do I think it fair that, as he lost on the playoff, all the commentators - including Peter Allis who possibly does have difficulty walking now - blamed it on his age. Possibly - but equally possibly not. Golfers have bad days, bad tournaments and bad years.

Look at Woods. He missed the cut - but was that because of his age? Look at Harrington who had won the previous two Opens - he finished +12 for the tournament. Is he getting on?

Watson played well and deserved to both win the competition and to be playing at that level. Cink finally won the match - because he was able to play better in a stressful circumstance.

There is a point for business (as I assured my wife throughout play yesterday). If people are good at what they do, then it doesn't matter what age they are - or what ethnic background they come from, or what school they went to. Quality will prevail - and so businesses should seek out and develop quality in every one of their employees who shows aptitude in any field. To finish on another sports metaphor - play the man, not the ball.

Thought for the day

It's not often that I'm in agreement with a speaker on Radio 4's "Thought for the Day". Today, however, the slot was filled by Dr. Mona Siddiqui from the University of Glasgow with a talk about banks and bankers. 

One section in particular resonated with me:

But all this anger at one man and his pension is neither right nor moral. Even if the moral pressure forces him top give away some of this wealth to a charity or a good cause, it wouldn't really change anything - once we had his redemption, we would look for another bogeyman, another avenue to vent our frustration at a crisis which many of us still can't get our head around. Sir Fred for the time being is an easy distraction from the real crisis of a downward spiralling economy.

She goes on to suggest that we (people in general - every one of us) have a moral duty of care over the economy, which I think is true. Perhaps if we have kept that in the forefront of our minds, we would be in a less drastic position now?

Blame 2 - this time it's personal

I promise to stop going on about this soon... Well, as soon as the press calm down about looking to attribute blame for the current economic circumstances (I refuse to call it a crisis) - which is not likely to be very soon.

This time it's Robert Peston (yes, him again) writing in his blog on the BBC's web site. Writing about HBOS's results (which are awful - but who is surprised) he says:

As I've said before, it is amazing that the Financial Services Authority, the
City watchdog, didn't feel it was appropriate to rein in HBOS's corporate
lending department.

Well - as I've said before, it is amazing that the shareholders didn't feel it was appropriate to rein in HBOS's lending department. Surely they are the first line of defence? Or how about the Board - or the Non Execs?

It would not have been easy. Try to imagine suggesting dumping and running from the Sub Prime market (and its associated off-shoots) in, say, January 2006. As a Chief Executive of any global banking setup you would first have been laughed at, and second would have been fired as your stock price didn't keep pace with your competition. It can't however, all be the fault of the FSA.

Update: 

Mr. Peston is at it again - with another rant against Sir Fred Goodwin. I don't suggest that he's blameless, nor that he should avoid any form of personal permanent inconvenience for some of his decisions. What concerns me is the focus on one man - Mr. Brown and friends must be very happy. The more focus on Sir Fred, the less on them. Come on BBC - context please.