Authors:Legal Action Group
Created:2024-04-29
Last updated:2024-04-29
Win your client’s trust and be prepared to irk judges, youth justice barristers told
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Barristers doing youth justice work need not only specialist legal knowledge, but also to be willing to win young clients’ trust and ‘meet them where they are at’, according to two leading solicitors speaking at an event at Matrix Chambers.
Hosting the seminar on representing children, barrister Danielle Manson asked panellists Sandra Paul, from Kingsley Napley, and Aika Stephenson, from the charity Just for Kids Law, what youth justice barristers can do better.
Stephenson said: ‘Take the opportunity to get to know the client. That’s really important. Lots of our clients don’t have a sense of engagement with their barrister. They are not sure if they are on their side. They don’t necessarily trust them.’
Paul said she looks for barristers who are ‘absolutely committed to getting the right result for this client and for me. I need to know they are not going to worry about being unpopular. Not going to worry if the judge shouts or treats them like an idiot. They’ve got to be prepared to say, “Yes, I know. But this is a child.”’
Stephenson added: ‘You have to meet every child where they are at.’
Another issue highlighted during the seminar was the reluctance of judges to allow vulnerable child defendants to have support from an intermediary for the duration of a trial. Manson said that judges, with ‘one eye on the purse strings’, will often limit the presence of an intermediary to when a defendant is giving evidence, even if they are unable to follow the rest of the proceedings unaided.
Manson pointed out that the 2020 Just for Kids Law case of TI ‘reviewed all the authorities and made clear it’s not a high hurdle to overcome for an intermediary to be required’. She added: ‘The key to having an intermediary is effective participation, not just about communication. When you are representing a client, it’s really about their ability to engage and follow the case.’
Both Paul and Stephenson said their mantra when acting for children facing arrest or charge is ‘to do for this child what I would want someone to do for my child’.