Finding a Barrister

In a family law matter, and particularly in a criminal law matter, it may be better to go to solicitors from the outset, but for civil law matters in England and Wales it is normally appropriate to engage a barrister direct for initial advice. For civil law matters, solicitors are not normally necessary at that initial stage but, depending on the case, it may be necessary to engage solicitors later on if there is civil litigation. But if you have a firm of solicitors which you regularly use for civil law matters,  and you prefer at the outset to engage a barrister through those solicitors, rather than direct, that can, of course, be done. See here for a brief introduction to the difference between civil law, family law, and criminal law.

To find a barrister, qualified in the law of England and Wales, to engage direct, start with a Specialist Bar Association:-

1. Find out whether there is a specialist Bar Association - SBA - for the relevant area of law. Each SBA is run by barristers who practise in the same field of law and you can find a list of SBAs for England and Wales here. You can check the membership criteria on an SBA's website to see if it is a requirement of membership that over half of a barrister member's work comes within the area of law of the SBA, or whether the membership requirements are looser with membership open to those who do a "substantial amount" of such work, etc. Membership of an SBA will not directly tell you how good a barrister is but, all other things being equal, people tend to get better at things the more they do them, so membership of an SBA which requires that over half (for example) of a barrister's work comes within the overall specialism of the SBA would be a positive sign.

2. Having found the appropriate SBA, you can do a Google search and include the name of the SBA in the Google search. For example if the matter is about rights of way you could do the following Google search:-

Barrister “Property Bar Association” “rights of way”

A few of the search hits might be articles or other items which just happen to have those phrases but the great majority of hits should be for individual barristers who are members of the SBA - either their personal website or their profile page within a group website such as the Bar Council's Direct Access Portal.  

3. The webpage or website of a barrister will typically tell you how long they have been practising and the areas of law they specialise in. When looking at the details of the specialist areas of law a barrister practises in bear in mind that if there is a large list you cannot tell from that which areas they do a lot of work in and which areas they have done a limited amount of work in (and perhaps would like to do more work in).

4. Civil law barristers typically travel extensively. Whilst criminal law barristers and family law barristers spend most of their time in court and need to limit how often and how far they will travel in order to maintain a reasonable work/life balance, the same is not generally true of barristers practising in the various area of civil law. Civil law barristers spend the majority of their time at a desk and those with specialised practises are normally willing to travel anywhere in England and Wales for appearances in courts or other tribunals or for site visits. A barrister's chambers’ address may, in any event, not be a reliable guide to where a particular barrister is physically based, as many chambers have annexes in other parts of the country and many civil law barristers work from home and no longer live near the chambers they joined at the start of their career. If you find many suitable barristers who are available then naturally, all other things being equal, you will probably choose one in your part of the country, but don't limit your initial search - start off with the whole of England and Wales. 

Finding a barrister for a civil matter urgently

Ideally you will consult a barrister at an early stage of the disputed matter but if you haven’t done that and you find that you need to engage a barrister urgently to provide advice, or draft some document, by some impending deadline, or to represent you at an imminent hearing, then your priority is likely to be quickly finding a competent barrister who is available, rather than taking longer to try to find the best barrister because, even if you do eventually manage to find the perfect barrister, and they are available, by that time the deadline will be closer and having less time available to prepare/do the work than ideally they would like is bound to affect the quality of the result, no matter how good the barrister is.

To find a competent barrister quickly you can contact a chambers clerk. Barristers tend to be grouped in chambers. See here for an explanation of what Chambers means. You can go on to Google Maps, find the location of the court or other tribunal where the litigation is, or, if litigation has not yet commenced, the location of the disputed land, or for a non-land dispute the location of the parties in dispute, and search for barristers chambers to see barristers’ chambers in that area. Note that Google Maps shows hits for barristers' chambers with a red circle but will also show sponsored results with a red square. Many of the sponsored results will be companies which offer legal services but are not actually barristers. It is the red circles you need if you are looking for actual barristers chambers. 

Many barristers travel extensively so you can search for barristers chambers not only in the nearest city but also in cities further afield. Whilst criminal law barristers and family law barristers spend most of their time in court and need to limit how often and how far they will travel in order to maintain a reasonable work/life balance, the same is not generally true of barristers practising in the various area of civil law. Civil law barristers spend the majority of their time at a desk and those with specialised practises are normally willing to travel anywhere in England and Wales for appearances in courts or other tribunals or for site visits. A barrister's chambers’ address may, in any event, not be a reliable guide to where a particular barrister is physically based, as many chambers have  annexes troughout the country and, of course, many civil law barristers work from home. However you won't have time to phone every barristers' chambers in the whole country so it is suggested that you start looking for barristers' chambers both in your nearest cities and, at the same time, also in the nearest regional centre of the High Court (Business and Property Division) as barristers' chambers tend to cluster around High Court regional centres and some other cities and, all other things being equal, you are more likely to find specialist civil barristers there. So start off by phoning the chambers in the cities nearest to you and, at the same time, phone chambers in whichever of the following is nearest to you: Exeter, Bristol, London, Cardiff, Birmingham, Norwich, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.   

To find a suitable  barrister quickly it is often better to contact the chambers clerk initially rather than trying to contact individual barristers. When first phoning a chambers ask for the “civil clerk” (not the criminal clerk or the family clerk) and tell them:

• That you need a “direct access” barrister to represent you at a hearing, draft a response to documents you have received, advise you, or whatever it is you are looking for. 

• If there are proceedings, the name of the tribunal that proceedings have been issued in – e.g. First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) or Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) or the Business and Property Division of the High Court or the County Court.

• If there is a hearing, the date that the hearing starts, how many days it has been allocated, and which city the hearing is to take place in (or if it is a video hearing make that clear).

• If there is a deadline (e.g. for the drafting of a document to be submitted to the court) make that clear. 

• The general area of law concerned such as: property – rights of way, or whatever it is.