Parties before the Commercial Court have been encouraged to allow junior barristers to conduct more advocacy.

The latest edition of the Commercial Court guide, published today, recommends that parties instructing more than one advocate should allow juniors to play a more significant role. ‘The court encourages oral advocacy to be undertaken by junior advocates,’ the guide states. 

Junior counsel may also be ‘well placed to assist the court’ at a case management conference, the guide suggests. Even where leading counsel is required to attend a CMC, ‘at least some of the matters arising may appropriately be dealt with by the more (or most) junior advocates’, it adds.

The guide’s recommendations echo comments made by Sir Julian Flaux, the chancellor of the High Court, in a speech to the Chancery Bar Association last month. He raised concerns that ‘even in procedural hearings, particularly in large cases, the parties instruct QCs and the advocacy is done by them, a problem which has been accentuated by the pandemic’.

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Commercial Court ‘encourages oral advocacy to be undertaken by junior advocates’

‘As anyone who has been an advocate will say, it is only by doing your own advocacy and making your own mistakes that you learn your trade,’ Flaux added.

The latest version of the guide also establishes a default paperless approach to both trials and applications and emphasises the expectation that all hearings of half a day or less will take place remotely.

Mrs Justice Cockerill and Mr Justice Andrew Baker, in charge of the Commercial Court and Admiralty Court respectively, said the guide ‘reflects the steep learning curve of the past two years, in which the Covid-19 pandemic led to a de facto transformation of a number of the court’s processes’.

The guide also states that parties should be prepared to provide copies of their skeleton arguments to any member of the press or public who requests one. ‘Unless a party has solid grounds for declining to provide a copy, a party should comply with the request voluntarily, without the need for intervention by the court,’ it says.