Choosing a Barrister

When a barrister is needed for a case how does a client or lawyer go about finding and selecting a barrister with the ability, skill and experience that matches the task ahead?

Common reasons for the choice of a barrister for a particular case include recommendation via word of mouth from a friend or associate, recommendation from another lawyer or barrister, or prior use of a barrister. The informed consumer of legal services may require more information about his or her prospective barrister or barristers. Sometimes recommendations might be based more on perception than fact.

Barristers have advertised and they do advertise. Associations of barristers have published directories or like documents containing information about their members. These directories may set out academic qualifications, number of years of experience and areas where the individuals would accept work. Information of a like kind may now be found on Internet sites (for example, Francis Burt Chambers in Western Australia - http://www.francisburt.com.au).

The directories, whether in hard copy or provided through web sites, typically provide information about the kind of work barristers would be willing to perform but they may not always provide information about the work the individual barrister has in fact performed or is skilled to perform. They do not always provide data in a manner that can be independently verified by resort to publicly available documents.

Statements of work areas can be misleading when they are not backed up by verifiable data on nature and extent of experience. A number of members of a particular bar association may claim to accept work in a specified area and yet few may be experts in the field. Some may have more expertise than others. Some will have more advocacy experience than others.

Barristers are service providers. As with any other provider of a service a barrister should be able to demonstrate relevant expertise and experience in a particular area by reference to a portfolio of work. As an advocate a barrister should be able to point to a portfolio of decided cases where that person has acted as advocate for a party. There is an increasing number of databases of decided cases against which claims of expertise might be checked or where the name of an experienced and suitable advocate might be found by reference to proven work performed in decided cases recorded in the database.

Recorded (in a database) experience as an advocate in trials and appeals may assist a lawyer or client in the tasks of searching for and choosing a barrister. The informed consumer of legal services can cross check or supplement traditional methods of referral with information that is now publicly available. This data may provide a guide to the individual barrister's portfolio of work. The recorded work of individuals can be compared.

The Australian AustLII database http://www.austlii.edu.au can be searched by name for a given individual to find records of Australian cases where that individual has been an advocate. In Western Australia the Legal Practice Board makes available to practitioners in that State its PLEAS database. This also includes reported and unreported decisions of the District Court and the Supreme Court of that State. That database can be searched to find evidence of work done in court by a particular individual.

These searches provide some empirical evidence of the nature and degree of experience of a barrister, or each of a number of barristers, who might be considered as candidates for the task required. What the barrister indicates a willingness to do can be checked against cases the barrister has in fact done. Claimed or apparent expertise or experience can be checked against evidence of expertise or experience.

Database search results do not solve the problem of how to choose a barrister. However they provide a consumer of legal services with additional information that once was not available and that may help the consumer make a better informed decision. They supplement and can be balanced with information from traditional sources such as recommendations, prior use of a barrister and bar directories.