Northern barristers are no longer eclipsed by over-manned London, reports Jon Robins

‘The provinces have suffered for years by being considered the ugly sister of the London bar,’ says Bill Braithwaite QC, head of the 90-strong Exchange Chambers, which is based in Liverpool and Manchester. ‘But now we’re getting some payback at last, because the London bar is very over-manned and they are beginning to feel the pinch.’


Certainly the northern circuit supports a thriving profession with some 1,100 barristers, including 77 QCs, practising from 33 chambers in Manchester, Liverpool and Preston. ‘We even find London barristers are having to travel to the provinces to do the level of work that we wouldn't do even if we didn’t have to travel,’ Mr Braithwaite continues.


‘We are very busy at the moment – in stark contrast to many London sets,’ agrees Timothy Horlock QC, head of personal injury at Manchester chambers 9 St John Street, which has more than 50 members. So what is driving the market? ‘Maybe the service that the regional bar offers is a more efficient, more cost-effective and accessible than London,’ the barrister replies. ‘Certainly, there is a large volume of personal injury work which needs servicing for solicitors throughout the north-west and further afield.’ He reckons that their client base is ‘largely regional’, but certain aspects of work (such as catastrophic personal injury work) are national.


‘There is a national spread to the work coming in, and it is by no means restricted to the north-west,’ says Bill Brown, senior clerk at Kings Chambers in Manchester, which has 71 tenants. ‘We do planning inquiries in Cornwall and we do them in Berwick-upon-Tweed.’


The merger in 2002 of two major Manchester chambers (24a St John Street and 28 St John Street) created the superset St John's Buildings, which was again augmented by a further merger with local commercial law specialists Merchant Chambers a couple of years later. It has more than 100 members. Not everyone is in expansionist mode, however. ‘We do not want be a mega-set,’ comments Bill Brown.


The one potential cloud on the horizon appears to be the Clementi reforms. ‘There has been panic but I think people are holding their nerve,’ says Mr Brown. ‘I think that we are well-placed because we have marketed ourselves a specialist chambers and we do not do crime or family any more.’ The concern is that the regional bar could lose out disproportionately with the advent of ‘supermarket law’ and the provision of volume legal services. ‘We are thinking about what we should do and how we should cope in a changing world,’ says Mr Braithwaite. ‘From our point of view, it gives us an opportunity to rethink some of our structures. On the whole I think it is a huge opportunity.’