Christmas is almost here. This is the last working week I will enjoy before the Christmas break. It has been a long and busy Michaelmas Term. It is now exactly 2 months since I moved chambers to Hailsham Chambers in the Temple in London.
2026 is already shaping up to be a very busy year, and I am looking forward to it. But this is also a good time to reflect on what has passed.
Looking back, next year, is my thirtieth year at the Bar. I spent 24 years in Nottingham, and 5 years in Manchester. But coming to Hailsham, felt oddly like coming home. The Bar is a much smaller profession than the solicitor’s profession, and we tend to know each other. I have known some of my friends and colleagues in chambers for nearly 30 years.
Hailsham is a very long established set of chambers in the Temple, with legal luminaries such as Theo Mathew, Lord Diplock, Lord Cecil, and Lord Hailsham amongst its former members. Its location in 4 Paper Buildings in the Temple, opposite the Inner Temple Hall, could not be more central to the Inns of Court.
I now have a room in chambers again, with a fine view over the Temple Gardens, and can wander out whenever I need to, for lunch in Hall, or for a snack and a cup of coffee at the Garden Room in Middle Temple Lane.
It is now also some 13 years, since I began this blog. I did so to promote the work that I did at the time from Nottingham, and also because I like to write. I write about many things, and when this blog was created, blogs had an element of novelty to them.
I have thought about whether it is time to retire this blog, to history. Website administration, is getting more complex rather than simpler, with more things that can go wrong. In a sense, this blog is a creature of 2012.
Now blogs are commonplace, and form part of the White Noise, of content that screams out over the internet, stealing your mental bandwidth. Many blogs are started as exercises in content marketing, but I do wonder whether that has had its day.
The deluge of daily content is simply that. Who can keep up with it all, and who needs to, given the magick of the AI enabled search engine when they have a point that requires research?
I also suspect that seminars are passing away. In years gone by, I used to do a lot of seminars in person, for many firms who no longer exist or have been amalgamated into others, but have noticed that the terms of trade have worsened.
After the seminar, one used to be taken out to lunch by the partners afterwards, then lunch was downgraded to sandwiches, and now one is fortunate if there are biscuits with the coffee.
I find that people like to send cases, to people they know or have had personally recommended to them, and so these days, I tend to invite people out for lunch, when I am interested in working with them, or they have had the kindness to send me work already.
I find that is a more civilised form of engagement, and more enjoyable than the lunchtime seminar.
Perhaps the biggest change in recent years, is the intrusion of social media into the business and professional space.
In a sense I think the conversation is now on Linkedin.
So whilst this blog will remain, as a record of the glory of the years that have been and gone, it is passing into senescence.
However feel free to contact me on Linkedin, or indeed, why not come out for lunch?
Thank you, Andrew, for keeping Costs Barrister. It is very informative for those of us who practice in other systems, even as historically related as the UK and US systems are. It is also inspiring when you write on non-legal topics. AI’s magic can be the dark arts, as we continue to see lawyers get in trouble for depending upon it rather than using it like other research tools. Good information and good thought never pass into senescence; that is why intelligent people revere the classics.
Merry Christmas!