Why a poker face is an essential skill for barristers

At the Battle of Waterloo, one of the Duke of Wellington's generals was hit by a cannon ball and said little of it apart from to utter the words: 'Good God, I appear to have lost my leg.' The Iron Duke replied similarly pithily: 'Good God, Sir '“ so you have.' Such pluck and pith and understatement '“ and such poker face.

Controlling one's emotions in court is a tricky business. On the one hand we all do lots of forensic outrage '“ at witnesses, in closing speeches to the jury. But the real emotion is kept hidden. Playing cards with friends recently I was the subject of much comment on my 'poker face' (not that it helped, I still lost) and I found myself being asked lots of questions about courtroom conduct.

I explained that the last thing we should be doing as advocates is betraying our real emotions. Time and time again carefully constructed cross-examinations have quickly gone off track as the witness has unhelpfully given an answer that is not the one that is written down on my plan. It is tempting to say: 'You are supposed to say 'yes' to that question and then I can ask you all of these questions that follow in my bullet point plan!' '“ but of course we do not. Nor can we start again if it has all gone horribly wrong. We just have to look as if the answer we have just been given is the one that we were expecting '“ even if it has just blown the leg off the client's case, as it were.

Poker face can be useful in many situations '“ playing poker, obviously, when calling and cross-examining witnesses, and with the client when some frankly ludicrous instructions are being given. It is not helpful to the professional relationship to burst out laughing when one's client comes to explain why they had so much money on them at a given time, or such a large quantity of drugs, or that their fingerprint is on the inside of the window. No doubt such interpersonal skills are also often deployed in busy A&E departments when such things as Hoovers, rodents and items of fruit have to be extracted from places that are not their natural home.

Sometimes there is a need to hide one's temptation to yield to irritation or even anger. Sometimes clients are feeling a bit too sorry for themselves '“ everything is always someone else's fault, it is not their fault that they have rearranged someone else's face ('He dissed me.' 'Oh, well that's alright then... it is clear now'). Or that they have done a particularly nasty burglary of an old lady's house ('I needed the money, didn't I?').

When asking a young client once why his account to the police in interview was markedly different to the one he was now giving, his father butted in to say aggressively: 'What you've got to understand is, he ain't had no education!' '“ the temptation at such a tense point of the trial (he was about to give evidence in a very nasty rape trial) to say: 'And whose fault is that then, Dad?' was great but of course not '“ poker face '“ overwhelming.

No position to judge

But we always have to remember that we are in a privileged position '“ we are only in the cells with them, in prison with them, speaking on behalf of them because we are entrusted to do a very personal, difficult at times, job. We have no right to bring our own thoughts and views into the situation. We do not judge: that is for others. We do not decide: that is for others. We are not repelled or approving: if there is a place for that it is not with us. We are the empty cab '“ driving off wherever the client's bizarre circumstances and even more bizarre instructions may take us. We are armed with our professional responsibility and, of course, our poker face.

The best times when this is all necessary are those wonderful occasions when you really, really must not burst out laughing in court. Once I had to hide behind the rows and rows of lever arch files in their boxes to avoid seriously compromising my client during cross-examination. The answer given to prosecuting counsel was devastating '“ and true, but put so funnily I nearly died. Prosecuting counsel had nowhere to go, accept mentally to say 'touché', or acknowledge that, on that point at least, he had just had his leg blown off. He passed on gracefully and nailed the defendant with the next point. We were expecting that one '“ but we did laugh long and loud together afterwards.

And once, in the same trial, when the prosecution called the devastating handwriting expert to prove that my client and the mystery person whose fault it all really was were one and the same, we really needed to have our poker faces on. I sat there thinking how devastating the evidence was, and that there was nowhere to go. I rose to my feet, looked at her '“ she was quite nice looking, and could think of nothing to put to her, except: 'You're lovely!' I did not say that of course '“ most unprofessional '“ so we mucked about round the edges a bit and then I sat down fast. Everything in order: poker face.

A few weeks later, the guilty verdict came in, and a few weeks after that my client got five years. Throughout we were inscrutable '“ we had not laughed, sworn or lost our rag, shown our disappointment or consternation. Several legs had been blown off, and nobody noticed a thing. I am proud of that '“ I just wish I was better at cards.