Off on the right foot

Ordinarily I do not get very excited about the arrival of a new year. In law firms the run up to Christmas and New Year provokes undue stress and anxiety. Suddenly everything has to be signed off, documents must be settled and advice must be turned around 'by the New Year' '“ which means that everyone is working frantically towards a deadline that is in fact meaningless; just one of those things '“ like spring cleaning before going on holiday so that it is all lovely when you come home '“ that is totally arbitrary.

Christmas does not last long really, yet to the managers and so on it appears as some sort of Gobi Desert in terms of inactivity and loss of momentum. So everyone is busting themselves and trying to do the office party thing and the client lunch thing and the whole point of Christmas is '“ as usual '“ lost and gone in the midst of chargeable hours and email problem transference (you know, send someone an email and somehow you are covered and your problem becomes their problem, just like magic!).

Then when you do have New Year's Eve and everyone goes bananas and drinks a lot, snogs random acquaintances, stumbles over the third line of Auld Lang Syne and detonates thousands of pounds of fireworks we all wake up the next day and the world has not changed '“ there are three murders on the news, repression, poverty and fear are just as prevalent and firmly entrenched as they were this time yesterday, and all that has really happened is that you have to concentrate more than usual for a while writing out a cheque.

But this year there has been something to cheer about. Our battered old justice system has done something genuinely life affirming in working hard and bringing to fruition the prosecution of two of the suspects in the Stephen Lawrence murder. As I write they have been sentenced and the word is of renewed vigour and soul searching to bring others to justice as well. It is reported that when the defendants were sentenced there was cheering in court '“ who would have thought of that happening? Has something, then, occurred '“ that we are in fact a better society than in 1993 when Stephen Lawrence was murdered? Diversity training, understanding and intolerance of intolerance are firmly entrenched in our daily lives. We have inquiries into allegations of football field racist abuse and meaningful bans that follow a finding of guilt, whereas not so long ago crowds threw bananas at black players on the opposing team and made monkey noises.

Tough times

2012 is going to bring serious challenges to our justice system and the way we all do our work. It is going to bring serious challenges to our police forces as well. For the Olympics we have been told that there will be a military presence as well as the police presence. There is an anxiety that rioting will resurface in the summer months and, whether its cause is selfishness, greed, displacement from society or a combination of all three, the deterrent effect of the sentencing that followed the riots may well be tested. We hear talk of water cannon, rubber bullets and even live rounds in certain circumstances. Will we have gunfire and fatalities?

For the criminal law professions there are the results of CPS grading, QASA and the whole structure and rate at which we are to be paid. There are delays and backlogs in payment. There is the real impression that we are just not wanted anymore '“ that we can and should be got rid of in a manner akin to constructive dismissal '“ grade, monitor, assess, cut pay, don't pay '“ make conditions or a combination of them so intolerable that bright young people and bright older people will hang up their wigs and leave the Bar. In its place we will have time-harried, price-imposed hum-drum administration of justice by a grey cost effectiveness that risks snuffing out the fact that each case is unique, is prosecuted and defended with a vigour that comes from the fact that the advocate is approaching it afresh and not as a batch number or routine.

A happy new year

The irony is that the conclusion of the Stephen Lawrence murder trial '“ at least insofar as these two defendants are concerned '“ is due to a combination of tenacious pursuit by the Lawrence family, the hard work of the police team, the efforts of solicitors, the CPS and the barristers. It is also due to the fact that the defendants were represented properly and defended properly and ably. This is not a hollow victory, a show trial, a sham. It was a proper, hard-fought trial where everybody involved from the judge down played a fully committed, utterly professional and dedicated part.

Standards were not compromised, there was no unfairness or bias, no interference or pressure; just our system doing what it should, independently, bravely, carefully, without heed to getting it over by Christmas, or a cap on the cost, and everyone decent in the UK has started the new year with a feeling that some things are really not so bad about our country '“ however long it takes, whatever the false starts. What all of the people involved produced in the end '“ from the witnesses, the scientists, the police, the defence teams, the CPS and the prosecution teams and the barristers '“ was something that the whole country has appreciated, a nugget of pure gold, irreplaceable when lost, called justice. That at least can make in one sense for a happy new year.