LIKE most boutiques, Cloth Fair Chambers is small and exclusive: a criminal set of seven highly rated silks. They formally open in their newly refurbished 17th-century building this month. The plan is to add up to five further silks or senior juniors within the next two years. More will be needed to replace the star veterans — Bevan, Langdale, Lawson and Purnell — when they retire. One factor in the new set is the wish to preserve independence from a system in which chambers will bid for batches of criminal cases. They will do some legal aid crime but Cloth Fair’s chief and openly admitted raison d’être is to go for high-value, privately paid defence work.

A leading white-collar fraud specialist, Ian Burton, of Burton Copeland, says: “Every single one of them is a top-flight performer. In a perfect world, you might add Clare Montgomery, QC, Ben Emmerson, QC, Alex Cameron, QC, and the junior Clare Sibson to their number.” One prominent silk calls it “a huge gamble”; another predicts that they will do well “because of the quality of their people and the niche they fill”.

“Many barristers were initially shocked that we’ve set up so blatantly as a specialist set,” Ian Winter, QC, a key driver in the set, admits. “But the more I learn about the Carter review and the future of the legally aided side of the profession, I’m convinced that this is the right thing to do.

“There will be a significant contraction of the Bar — between a third and a half in five years. The big fraud cases we’ve been involved in — expensive and time-consuming — won’t be allowed to continue. Given the new Fraud Bill and fraud trials without juries, regulatory and fraud work will come much closer. Carter will force barristers into huge sets such as Garden Court or into law firms providing in-house advocacy services like Herbert Smith. Economics,” he concedes, “is economics.” It would not surprise him, he says, if “Cloth Fair eventually became part of a City firm”.

Cloth Fair is just the latest in a series of moves and mergers at the Bar driven by a need to regroup to survive. At Garden Court, the largest set in London with 104 tenants, Colin Cook, senior clerk, says: “As a general common-law set doing legal aid work, we face difficulties we’re trying to address so that we can continue in this market. This will be achieved through growth — increasing our numbers and reducing costs through economies of scale.” He accepts that some are leaving the Bar because they can no longer afford to practise. “We haven’t seen the major effects of that yet but we will. Smaller sets will disappear and if individuals or groups are not soaked up by the bigger sets, they’ll be left with nowhere to go. Numbers will dwindle.”

One casualty was the dissolution this year of 199 Strand. Martin Griffiths, former senior clerk, says: “We lost critical mass in terms of having the right people doing the right level of work. People were leaving, gravitating towards specialist sets. 199 put its stall out in five different areas of work. We didn’t have enough people in each of those to compete. The specialist Bar will continue to thrive, but a lot of what many barristers do is very routine. Solicitors will retain more of that work.”

He predicts that the Bar will “probably shrink by 50 per cent in the next few years”. And already, several sizeable mergers have happened, creating large successful sets in different fields: Crown Office Chambers in common law and Maitland Chambers in Chancery work are prominent examples.

Birmingham, where two super-sets of chambers have emerged, may point the way. No 5 Chambers, the largest set in Britain with 180 barristers, has its centre in Birmingham with Bristol and London annexes. Tony McDaid, the practice director, says: “Smaller sets doing criminal and family legal aid, unless they get bigger, will either merge or go to the wall. We have to be bigger to compete. There used to be nine sets in this building; now there are two. The Crown Prosecution Service is doing more of its own advocacy and defence firms increasingly have solicitor-advocates in court. Fees are being driven to such a level that many can’t survive.”

When Three Fountain Court in Birmingham folded earlier this year, 17 former tenants went to No 5 Chambers and 23 to St Phillips Chambers. The product of three merged Birmingham sets, St Philips is now the second-largest chambers’ with 170 tenants. Jonathan Fox, the chief executive, says: “We’ve been highlighted as the cheapest set of chambers to be a member of — effectively managed by group procurement and strong credit control. We operate as a law firm would.

You’ll end up with niche sets, some quite large, or quite small, like Cloth Fair. The dangerous ground is for chambers of middle size that will be squeezed at either end unless they merge.”

Stephen Hockman, QC, chairman of the Bar Council of England and Wales, dismisses thoughts of a significant shrinkage at the Criminal Bar as “unquestionably pessimistic”. In criminal work above all, he says, the advocate’s role is certain to continue. “There’s clearly a continuing and growing demand for their skills. It’s a fundamentally flawed analysis to say this is an industry that is dying out. The volume of work has increased because cases have become more complex. Crime is certainly not diminishing; it’s a growth industry. There is a buoyant and growing need for people to do this work.”

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