Judge Gledhill's regret over solicitor-advocate 'distress'

The judge who sparked an extraordinary public row last year after he delivered stinging criticism of three solicitor-advocates in open court has issued a clarification admitting he should have dealt with the situation differently.

In a written statement, Judge Gledhill QC (pictured) said he understood the ‘observations’ he made at the conclusion of a two-week trial in April 2009 had ‘caused distress’ to the advocates concerned.

‘With hindsight I accept that the matter would better have been dealt with in chambers when the advocates would have had the opportunity to respond, in which event their conduct might have been seen in a different light,’ he said.

Gledhill added: ‘I also understand that my remarks may have been taken to imply criticism of the solicitors’ firms which instructed the advocates. I wish to make it clear that I had no such intention.’

His initial comments came at the end of R v Yeu and Others, a conspiracy trial at Southwark Crown Court, in which all four defendants were represented by solicitor-advocates.

Gledhill criticised the competence of three of the four advocates, saying ‘basic rules of both law and procedure’ had been regularly broken. He said he was so concerned about the standard of one advocate that he came close to discharging the jury.

Gledhill had also suggested that legal aid rates might have contributed to the decision by the solicitors’ firms involved to keep the work in-house, ‘in effect doubling the income of the case’.

The reason and timing for the judge’s statehttp://www.lawgazette.co.uk/node/54631/editment, coming almost a year after he made the initial remarks, is not clear, but it was welcomed by the Law Society, the Solicitors Association of Higher Court Advocates (SAHCA) and the two firms involved, which had always maintained that the criticisms were unfounded.

Law Society chief executive Des Hudson said he was ‘delighted’ for the firms that the matter had been laid to rest. ‘As we made clear at the time, if the judge had concerns there were much more appropriate ways the matter could and should have been dealt with,’ he said.

Tim Lawson-Cruttenden, immediate SAHCA past chairman, said the judge’s criticisms had ‘caused considerable damage to the reputation of solicitor advocacy’, but everyone had worked hard to ‘find a constructive and positive way forward’ which he said had been achieved.

The two London firms involved, Bullivant & Partners and McCormacks Law, said they welcomed Gledhill’s clarification. Bullivant & Partners thanked the judge for ‘making it clear there is no criticism of the firms’.

• See also Solicitor HCAs v the bar – the debate rages on