Lawyers and the Cab Rank Rule

Lawyers and the cab rank rule

The cab rank rule is there to protect the public and access to justice. It is not there to protect politicians who were once lawyers from scrutiny.

LAURA PERRINS

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Most people don’t like lawyers. Although it is still a prestige profession lawyers are not well liked by the general public, until they need a lawyer. Shakespeare hated them, as did Dickens. Satin himself was depicted as a lawyer in the movie The Devil’s Advocate.

In the masterpiece Seven the lawyer comes to a grizzly end. His killer later explains the ‘justice’ of murdering the lawyer, “a man who dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath he could muster to keeping murderers and rapists on the street.” That’s lawyers for you.

When people deign to criticise a politician over his or her previous work as a barrister some big wig will reach for the cab rank rule.

It is usually the likes of Dominic Grieve (UK) or Fintan O’Toole (Ire) who pulls out the cab rank rule, slams it on the table, like it was some kind of trump card. How very dare you criticise the politician who once represented a bank or the mother of one of those ISIS Beatles, El Shafee Elsheikh. Sure enough Trump’s name will be in there too. (Fintan O’Toole can barely get through an entire piece without reference to Trump or the populism fandango.)

I explained at Gript the cab rank rule is there to protect the public and access to justice. It is not there to protect politicians who were once lawyers from scrutiny should they decide to become politicians.

The reason and importance of the cab rank rule was restated in 2003 “The rule means that barristers cannot discriminate between clients, and that they must take on any case provided that it is within their competence, they are available and appropriately remunerated.

The cab rank rule promotes access to justice. It means that clients will not be deprived of the advocate of their choice because the client or the client’s cause could be seen as objectionable or unpopular. People with unpopular causes or accused of serious offences do not need the additional challenge of having first to persuade a lawyer to take them on.

Barristers do not choose their clients nor do they associate themselves with their clients’ opinions or behaviour by virtue of representing them. The cab rank rule:

· Promotes access to justice;

· Recognises that it is for judges and juries to decide and to judge, and that passing judgment is not the role of advocates;

· Imposes an obligation on the independent referral bar to accept work even from those with whom we profoundly disagree, and of whom we profoundly disapprove;

· Means that our role and duty as advocates is, and is only, to advise, and then to represent, always subject to our duties to the court.”

Fair enough. But it is not entirely honest to say that barristers do not choose their clients. Barristers can refuse work and they don’t really have to explain why. In London, which has a chambers system, barristers develop careers in particular areas from the very start.

Lord Hermer KC in his previous life at Matrix chambers chose to represent people who sued the British state, such as the mother of an ISIS terrorist. That was not an accident. He chose to work in that area for a reason. Therefore people are entitled to judge him and by extension PM Sir Keir Starmer KC for that.

We know less about Presidential candidate Catherine Connolly than AG Lord Hermer KC. We know she acted on behalf of the banks when things went tits up in Ireland after the financial crash. The banks were moving to repossess the homes of some people and Catherine Connolly acted for the banks. Maybe she needed the work and the money to put food on her own table. Maybe she did it, even though she hated it and got out as soon as possible. But it is ludicrous to suggest that highlighting her work in this area when she then enters politics on a left – wing platform is somehow ‘populism.’ It isn’t.

If someone decided to act as a defence barrister in sexual offences say for 20 years of their life, most people will judge them on this. In fact, at the English bar it has become fashionable to instruct female barristers as defence lawyers in sexual offences. Not all the female barristers are happy with this and I certainly heard complaints about it in chambers.

One of Britain’s best known prosecutors Nazir Afzal explained how he simply stopped working as a defence barrister in these type of cases. He went on to become prosecutor and the chief crown prosecutor in the Rochdale grooming gang cases in 2012.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Mr Afzal said he had never celebrated a successful case as “nobody should be harmed in the first place”. He said those guilty were mostly men who wanted to restrict women’s choices. Mr Afzal started his career as a defence lawyer but told BBC presenter Lauren Laverne of the moment he realised he “just couldn’t do it.”

He was advising a rape suspect before a police interview and had given his client a copy of the victim’s statement. He could see the man was getting pleasure from “re-hearing and rehearsing what he had done allegedly to that woman”, Mr Afzal explained.

“And his reaction to reading what she had said just was the icing on the cake in my mind. I couldn’t say to him ‘plead guilty’ because he wasn’t going to. He was going to drag her through the courtroom… and that’s his right absolutely, but why should I be party to that? I wasn’t going to be party to that. So I walked out the door, literally, and I handed my notice in almost immediately afterwards. I’m not doing this anymore. I can’t do this. Good for people who can and we do need people who can do that, but it wasn’t for me.”

Mr Afzal joined the Crown Prosecution Service in 1991 and went on to become director of prosecutions for London where he brought perpetrators of so-called honour-based violence to justice. In 2011, as chief crown prosecutor for north-west England, he began investigating sex grooming gangs in Rochdale, overturning a previous CPS decision not to bring charges against suspects. He brought prosecutions against nine men who were convicted and jailed in 2012 for the sexual exploitation of 47 young girls.

Should Mr Afzal ever run for public office most voters would rightly conclude that prosecuting rapists is a more noble pursuit than spending 20 years defending them. It is dishonest to pretend otherwise.

.

(Sir Thomas Moore, National Portrait Gallery, Aug 2024. The patron saint of lawyers. He was Lord Chancellor and later executed after refusing to take the Act of Succession or recognise Kind Henry VIII ‘marriage’ to Anne Boleyn.)

This is about more than the cab rank rule, this comes down the very idea of how you want to spend your time on planet earth. There are some things you can ‘become a party to’ and there are some things where you say, count me out.

I understand that people have to work and put food on the table but there is work and there is work. If you spend your entire career only defending those accused of sexual crimes which can involve cross – examining complainants all the live long day, running outrageous defences such as this 13 year – old girl was consenting as she was the ‘girlfriend’ of the 25 year – old Asian “boyfriend” then you do that. But I’ll judge you for it and should you run for public office don’t expect my vote.

Similarly if you spend all your time as an immigration barrister working hard to keep illegal immigrants in the country, undermining national borders and fighting their deportation don’t expect me to vote for you.

There are honourable ways of spending your time, talents and energies and furthering the common good and there are dishonourable ways of doing so. It is right that politicians are judged according to their record.

This article (Lawyers and the cab rank rule) was created and published by Laura Perrins and is republished here under “Fair Use”

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