Orlagh Kelly: Welcome back to the Get Briefed podcast. In today's episode, I'm very lucky to be joined by the lovely director of operations at DEKA Chambers, Gordon Walters. Gordon, how are you?

Gordon Walters: Nice to see you, Orlagh.

Orlagh Kelly: Thank you for guesting. So Gordon, you've been heavily involved in the legal industry since around 2015 and you play a very key role in DEKA Chambers on the staff side, but not in that clerking element. And we're going to talk a little bit about your career. Can you tell the audience just a bit of background of your career pre-joining the chambers world?

Gordon Walters: Yes, I suppose chambers are always the third part of my career. I started off in the city when I left university. I started off with PwC, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accountancy firm. And once I qualified with them, I got more into management consultancy. And in my latter years within the accountancy, sort of, I worked for a boutique financial strategic consulting group. And we went into troubled companies and turned them around.

As part of that, came across a company that I thought I could do something with. So I decided to leave the city in accountancy for the world of leisure and hospitality, which is a hundred million miles away from everything I ever thought I would get involved with. But it was actually a very interesting thing to do and of its day. And it was all about scaling because you've got very high fixed costs in these sort of industries. And if you can actually get in there and get more customers than that, then you become very profitable. So anyway, I did that for 20 years. I rattled that off in about 10 seconds — 20 years of developing this business. And then my thoughts went to doing something a bit different. And my initial thought was to do something non-commercial and get involved with charities. Charities were really developing at that sort of time, 2015, something like that.

But I soon discovered that charities didn't want people unless they had charity experience, which I found quite frustrating. And so whilst I was prepared to take significant drops in income to do the job, nobody wanted me. But in the meantime, I'd actually signed up with a recruiter who did sort of public sector things. And they said, we haven't got any charities for you. We've got this interesting situation at a set of chambers. Now I knew nothing about this whatsoever. I knew nothing about chambers whatsoever. Absolutely nothing. I think I knew something about clerking. That was it. And I met them. Within half an hour, they had me working. So it went on from there. It should have only been a month. In the end, it was about 16 months. I think I was with them as their interim CEO and thoroughly enjoyed it. And it was a very rapid learning experience. But because I worked in situations where I'd been dropped into companies in liquidation and receivership and things.

I knew to rely on no continuity, no handover, no systems, often no data. So it was a big challenge, but really, really interesting. And I decided this is something I'd quite like to do. You know, I hadn't thought about doing it, but again, yes, it was very interesting to discover it so late in my career.

Orlagh Kelly: Yeah. And it is, you know, I think it's probably quite atypical for someone to come in so far into their career into the chambers world to start. It's not unheard of. I can think of some others, but typically it's an environment where people come in as a junior clerk on the staff side or a junior admin person and really embed themselves and work their way up from a very young age. So coming in as a professional but professional in other worlds, what were your thoughts on the chambers world? Were there differences that you noticed?

Gordon Walters: The first thing that hit me was the longevity of everyone. Members of staff would be in there 30, 40 years. I found it incredible that people were staying there in any role for that sort of time. And then the members themselves, again, they would tend to take pupillage with a set and then stay with them unless something radical happened while they were in chambers themselves. So that was the first thing that struck me — just how people were there for the long term. And whilst that is very good from a point of view of continuity, it's very bad from a position of change.

And if you're trying to change things and question why we do things, being told, we tried that 10 years ago and it didn't work — that doesn't help. It's not a very good environment. Coming in with no prejudices and just running at it, the people were probably a bit more open to my ideas because I was coming in afresh. It does mean you've got big challenges. I mean, even though many people in my position are called CEOs, Chief Executive Officers, you can't really be a CEO in a set of chambers because ultimately it's what the members want to do. They are all self-employed people and they're not going to be told what to do unless there's a very good reason why they need to do it. As you're aware yourself, Orlagh, from the problems we've had implementing GDPR changes, even if you do them on a light scale. But anything you wish to do, you really have to use soft power. That's the way you do it.

Now you can't just tell people — if you tell people they just won't do it. You've got to explain why you do it and not use anything like project fear or anything like that. You've actually got to ensure that they know that it's to their benefit what we're doing. See, I started in 2015 when I started to be involved with the chambers. And at that time there was a lot of chambers were recruiting CEOs. And I think there had been a preference towards people in the army for some reason. There's an awful lot of ex-army people involved. But it's where they started bringing in people from other areas, new areas. And what was interesting is we used to be invited to these monthly lunches by the recruiters. And I was noting, even though I was an interim in my chambers, I seem to have the longest service of anyone because they were in the door and back out within six months because they came in thinking they're going to be CEOs with all the responsibility and power that held and realised it wasn't going to happen. Members will do what they want to do.

The management committees, the heads of chambers — those are the people that have the power, if you like. But even heads of chambers will tell you they can't really make members do anything. It is all about consensus. It's about making people understand why things happen. I like the way that we do it within our chambers. We have our AGM coming up, but before the AGM we have something called the forum. And that's where all the members can come together and just discuss things as a forum — like an open outcry — and just go through anything that they wish to discuss. And then we go to an AGM where hopefully everything's been thrashed out and we'll vote for it. But, you know, in our chambers, all the members are involved in setting the rents, they're all involved in setting the budget. Obviously it's presented to them, but if they want to change it, then they can change it. I mean, that's what the consensus is — then that's what we'll do. You know, I can't come in and give them a budget, tell them what the rents are going to be. I mean, we'll calculate the budget, propose a budget, but it's for them to then decide where their priorities are. And I'll say just now, you know, one of the big issues that we're facing and everyone's facing is cyber crime. And we are reviewing our IT provision. And whilst there are some savings being made in the way that we now store our data, we don't use on-premises servers — the cost of security is massive. To go into these security operation centres — SOCs — that all these MSPs are now providing, I mean, it's a huge amount of money. So the members have to take a view: are they prepared to see their rents go up in a significant way to support this greater resilience that we now desire and know is important.

That's it. And equally on staffing, you know, I present the initial staff budget — the staff proposal, staff review — in conjunction with the director of Clerking and Business Development. And we propose those. Now, if the members decide, no, we're not going to give those pay increases, then that's for them to decide, even though we've given a business rationale for it. Ultimately, it's for them to do it.

So it's a very interesting situation. I like it because it keeps you on your toes as much as anything. You can't just say, right, do this. You've always got to give a rationale for doing it, but also not be deterred. You know, somebody tells me, we tried that 10 years ago — sorry, not interested. And it is very, very difficult to affect change. You've got to push it through.

Orlagh Kelly: Yeah. And even things like — and you know, I'm not talking about this, but the chambers — but even getting people to work on dual monitors. You're like, what's the point? You know, why should that be a battle? You sell people on it. No, that's the way you want to work. It's a more efficient way of doing things. I mean, the current battle I would say, without talking about diversity going, is email. You know, we cannot continue working on the basis of email. It just doesn't work. When you're copying people in and things, it's just, as it stands, people should be adopting things like Teams — they could use Slack as well. But anyway, that's me rambling off the topic. It's very difficult to affect change.

Gordon Walters: It is. Thank you.

Orlagh Kelly: What that makes me ask, I guess, is: what is it specific to the bar and the chambers world that is difficult to affect change? Do you feel that there's a personality that exists with barristers? Is it simply the fact that there's a hundred people who have a say in something on occasion if there's a hundred members in chambers? What exactly is it that you think is the key part of the problem?

Gordon Walters: I think it is because it's their business effectively. They feel that they have a right — and they do have a right — to participate in it. Whereas in a limited company, you wouldn't dare let your shareholders tell you how to manage it. And equally, if you think of most law firms, an average partner has no role in the actual management. But within chambers, they do. I mean, the management committee itself has very limited authority.

It is the members — most things are reserved to the members in general meeting. I mean, dare I say, my own position — for me to be sacked, it requires the members in general meeting. Interesting idea. I'm sure if the heads of chambers decide to get rid of me, they wouldn't have any problem doing it. But I mean, I'm saying that's the sort of thing that the members like to feel that they're in control. They like to know that they can make a change if they want to. And that's just the way it is.

I'm not saying it's sustainable. I think the management committees have become more relevant and it could well be, as chambers do evolve into larger sets, that we're going to have to move much more to the model adopted by law firms. So, you know, executive committees and your cabinets, things like that — where we have true devolved powers, a Politburo type thing, shall I say?

But yeah, I think it's within the nature of the barristers — inquisitive, all very bright, all very excellent people. They like to be involved and like to question things. So whenever I prepare a paper on suggesting why we do something, I'm very much aware I'm potentially going to be cross-examined on it. They're never out of court. And I have to get it absolutely right. So I can send an email that might be three lines long, but it will take me an hour to compose that — to draft that — to make sure I've thought of every point that somebody could raise questioning it. So it's a challenge there. I think, yeah, it's not a bad thing because it's not malicious. I don't think anyone questions your decisions just for the sake of it. Most suggestions are extremely helpful, but they like to be involved. And I don't really have a problem with that. My eyes are wide open to it.

Orlagh Kelly: And in your opinion, given that it's very different in terms of how other businesses within the legal sector and generally within the commercial community — it's very different in how it operates by virtue of the fact that essentially the members are for the large part the decision-makers. Does that serve chambers well or can you see situations where that is a detriment to that operating model?

Gordon Walters: I think in the case of DEKA, we've got 103 minds applying themselves to any big issue that comes up. And I don't have a problem with that. It's very positive that so many people are able to consider something rather than just being dictated to them. It also means that so many issues or so many things can be delegated. Unfortunately, as you know, things often get delegated to the same people. But we're able to do things in a way that we can involve members in different aspects of the operations and of the wider operations of chambers. It's nice to get people involved. The last thing you want is 10 people doing everything. We need to spread it out. I think what is quite interesting with chambers is that whereas in something like a law firm, you very specifically have your rainmakers — some partners who are basically not expected to achieve the billable hours because they're there to bring in the clients. Well, you don't have that in chambers. I mean, the rainmakers, if you like, are the clerks. That's their job. Now, some chamber members do get very involved and will be phoning up solicitors directly and doing that sort of marketing side of things. But yeah, so every member relies on their clerk to do that. And that did surprise me. I remember, you know, when we were going on overseas events and I found it interesting that the members were paying their own way. There wasn't a central budget for that because it was explained — it's not for members to pay for other members to drink champagne. You know, which is an interesting fact, even though these people were potentially going to develop other people's practices. I know fundamentally they were there to develop their own practices, but the chambers as a whole benefited from their activities.

Orlagh Kelly: And so thinking about decision-making processes — obviously you both, as 9 Gough and then 1 Chancery Lane, have come together, merged and become DEKA Chambers. DEKA being the Latin word for ten, I believe. And that's the reason behind that thought process there. Can you tell us a little bit about who came up with the idea to merge, how that came about? The reason I ask is because a lot of chambers look at that as an option. There is certainly a consultation ongoing by the Bar Standards Board about the potential for smaller chambers to merge so that they can better be prepared for governance, compliance, cyber security, all of those large costs that exist. Whether or not that's the right thing, I don't know. But from your perspective, can you tell us a little bit about your experience and how the idea came about?

Gordon Walters: I probably can't say too much about it because it is all very confidential. What I will say is — I think mergers happen because they reach each party at the right time where they're at. We had, I will say, we had considered a merger around the time when Covid was just about to hit and that was not the time to do it. And also there was another opportunity that arose just as we were moving premises. And again, that was not the time. So I think you have to be in the right state to do these things because it's completely different from a commercial merger. You're not talking about shareholders and added value and things like that — that's not the issue. You have to look very much at practice level. One of the concerns that people had about 9 Gough and 1 Chancery Lane merging is that 9 Gough is predominantly a claimant-based practice. We act for claimants, whereas 1 Chancery Lane, I think, would clearly say that they are a defendant-based firm.

And so there was an obvious conflict there and people thought, how do you manage those things? But within any set, you're going to have these Chinese walls. It's quite common for both parties, or opposing parties, to both be within the same set. So I think people were challenged by that. And also I think some people had some bad experiences — both sides — with members in the other set. I don't want to put it this way, maybe bad courtroom experience, and there was some maybe a bit of negativity there. But I think when people looked through it and saw that we weren't going to be cannibalising people's practices, which is what their main concern is, and that they would actually be strengthening it — then people were more open to it. I can tell you it took a year to happen. It was a protracted process. And it does again come down to the member. I think some people were concerned just because of the change in name. I think that's a trivial concern, I have to say. But no doubt some people did feel quite strongly about that. But for other people, it was about their practice, and then it depended where they were in their careers. If you've got another 30 years ahead of you, you've got to think, well, what would 9 Gough Chambers be like in 30 years time? What's it actually going to be like in 30 years time? And I think you could see just the way that things are moving. When you mentioned the BSB about merging chambers to meet the regulatory challenges — it's an interesting thing that they said there. I think that's really a cost-driven merger. I think merging purely on costs is doomed to failure. I think you've got to look at the practices. You've got to look at individual members, make sure the chemistry is correct. And in a way, we are a common law set. And 1CL were not. And again, that had to be rationalised — we had to recognise the differences there and accept they were coming into a common law set. So not purely civil, you know — family and crime as well, which is unusual. I think the smaller areas of crime and family — if I go back on that — they had to be reassured that they weren't going to get lost within this massive civil set. I mean, they're always, you know, a much smaller proportion of the overall set, but we were very determined that we would keep those people there. I think again, it's an open secret that when we did merge, some of the people from the commercial side at 1CL did move elsewhere. But that was always to be expected that there would be some, if you'd call them defectors. But I think it catches you at the right time. It's a bit like a romance. You just find that right person at that right time and hopefully it goes as smoothly as that. I think we're still in the first flush of love, I think, shall we say. We're only in our second year. I think if somebody's made the comment about the French Revolution, how did that work out? — it's early days yet. So I can say with all sincerity, it's worked really well. People have merged in very well. It's nice to see so many faces in chambers. I mean, in fact, it all happened around the end of Covid. And so we hadn't really got back to 100% normal working in chambers to actually see these new faces coming in. And because we were so much further down the line — I mean, since 1 Chancery Lane, where their offices were very much in the state that 9 Gough were in when we left ours. So they left offices which were beautiful, marvellous offices in the early nineties. But nowadays, you know, they come to our place and you've seen our place, Orlagh.

With its sky terrace and all the rest of it. It's a very nice environment to work in, although you do have to compromise. We work on a hot desk basis and open plan, so you don't get your wooden walls and all that. We're all open outcry here. We've got marvellous meeting rooms, air conditioning — and air conditioning's a fact, not saying everyone does have air conditioning.

Orlagh Kelly: Not everybody has their air conditioning if you work down in the...

Gordon Walters: But why? Why? I find it works. It's amazing.

Orlagh Kelly: And what I have had the privilege of being in your offices and your chambers and it is really beautiful. You guys have done a wonderful job and it has been interesting to see from when I was in 9 Gough the change from the more traditional wooden panelling and old library feel into the more corporate feel.

You're renovating and moving chambers because that's something a lot of chambers are doing right now, but it's not an insignificant amount of work. But before I move on to that and understanding, of course, that there's obviously a lot that's confidential in terms of a merger. Do you have any advice for other heads of chambers, CEOs or people like yourself who are thinking about this, about what they need to consider and any challenges that possibly you hadn't thought about but that you came across?

One of the things that strikes me while you think about that is culture of chambers. I have certainly, with 20 years at the bar and about 10 years working with clients in chambers, it's quite noticeable there are very different cultures. And so the bar is not all the same just because everyone — barristers and clerks as such — the cultures that are in each set are very different. The decision-making process, the leadership, the feeling of leadership. And that strikes me that you actually need to find, a little bit like romance I guess, as you suggest — you need to have the right chemistry. You need to want to work together. So that's something that strikes me — that if you were thinking about a merger, you need to understand how that might work. But you, of course, having lived through it, will have some advice, I guess, that other people could take.

Gordon Walters: I think you're absolutely right. It is about the chemistry. We all know that every set is different and they all have their personalities, their strengths and their weaknesses. Whether it's done at a heads of chambers level or whether it's done at senior clerking level — I mean, I think there's a lot to be said for a senior clerk speaking to other senior clerks to see what the scope is for any merger, whether there's an appetite for it. I think it needs to be kept confidential — that was the side we asked for, but within chambers I can tell you it was kept very tight. It was only a few people who actually knew what was going on until we were at the point of thinking this is something we can actually present to the members to consider. So you don't want to create this sort of Chicken Lickin' thing from the very first thought about it and start getting views. You don't want to hear 103 views at that sort of point. You want to keep it really tight. Find the things that you have in common rather than focus on the differences. Those common elements, that common chemistry, that common history — then I think that's something you can then develop on. But I really do stress that it is, as you're absolutely right — the chemistry, the ethos, the integrity, all those are things you want to be looking for. And the last thing you want to consider really is costs and finances, because it doesn't matter if the finances work — if the people themselves don't get on, then it'll just dissolve, it'll just break up.

I wasn't party to it, I don't know too much about it, but I know we had looked at a merger about five or 10 years ago. And I think that caused a lot of bad feeling within chambers such that we did have this — oh, we're not going to look at a merger, we tried that 10 years ago. So it can cause a lot of negativity. So yeah, I think you need to get the key people — your heads of chambers, your senior clerk — actually there to start to find the common ground.

And if there is common ground, then you develop it and take it from there. You need a heads of agreement, but that will come slightly later down the line. You've got to get to that point. And that's what you present to your members. Once you've got to your heads of agreement, then the people could discuss it. And hopefully you don't get bogged down in specific issues. I mean, name is a big thing in chambers. You know, the fact is people move but they still keep the same address, which gets very confusing. I mean, we did think about, when we moved, remaining as 9 Gough Square, but I mean, 9 Gough Square, 5 Norwich Street — it just never would happen. And you know, that is a very emotional thing, but again, that is the emotion. So you have to get over it. You have to rationalise it with people. And you know, that's one of the reasons why we're DEKA. I don't think 1 Chancery Lane would have expected to come in and just go forward as 9 Gough Chambers. I mean, that wouldn't have happened. 9 Gough Chambers would not have gone forward as 1 Chancery Lane. There's no point in just trying to come up with some sort of hybrid — 9 Gough Chancery or 9 Chancery. It just wasn't going to work, which is why we then put a lot of time, resources and money into the independent branding company to come up with the DEKA brand. And it's been something we've applied quite ruthlessly.

You know, anything that's got 9 Gough or 1 Chancery Lane on it — it's in the bin. It's very sad. It sounds a bit painful throwing a hundred mugs in the bin, but you've got to get rid of your brand. The old brands have got to go. The legacy has got to go. And it's even more important in a merger setting than where you just, you know, I know that companies change their brands with no actual change in the entity. But when you have to change the entity, it is absolutely essential that you've got complete buy-in by everyone. And that means that you throw the new branding at them wherever possible.

Orlagh Kelly: Yeah, and your branding is very strong and you have a very prominent — you must have a great marketing team — very prominent on social media. I see a lot going out. I saw something, I know that you're being featured in as part of a documentary at the minute on the BBC. One of your KCs was involved in a very high-profile case and that's going to be on BBC at the moment. And I'm sure that's an interesting change from some of the day-to-day stuff that you do, having that type of thing. Was that filmed in chambers?

Gordon Walters: Yeah. It was indeed.

Orlagh Kelly: And was that a difficult thing to undertake? You know, filming a documentary in chambers, or were you well set up with your new renovation?

Gordon Walters: It wasn't a problem. I mean, we'd actually done a video when we moved in here as part of our marketing. So we were quite familiar with what was involved — the cameras, the lights and everything, and having staff pretending to be clients. And I think I even pretended to be a client at one point in one of these things. But yes, I think it's always a buzz around. I mean, one of the things that we're doing in common law as opposed to some of the other areas of law is we don't necessarily get personalities in the place.

And I do remember in other places, whenever we got sort of famous actors or actresses coming in, the staff would always find a way to go into the conference room to deliver an urgent piece of paper or something like that. Or if we knew that somebody famous was coming to chambers, there was a certain air around the place. Yeah, we don't have — I mean, all our clients are important. They're all very important people. But you know, they really do make people get excited about them coming in. We treat them all the same is what I mean.

Orlagh Kelly: I'm sure you do. I'm sure you do.

Gordon Walters: I mean, dare I say, we're going to be having — I think you're aware that we had three silks in the competition this year. Paul Stagg, Ed Lam and James Thacker — which is a tremendous achievement for us to have three silks in one go, and across the three areas that we practise in as well. So that's going to be really exciting on the 18th of March, which is always an exciting thing when we have Silks Day and we have children in, it's all good fun. So to have three is going to be really something else.

I have to explain to people and other people in this building that, you know, this is why we've got some ancient Rolls Royces outside and loads of guys in wigs and tights. And also why there are so many children in the place. So I guess it's a special day. That's one of the wonderful things about chambers. We are a family in many ways and these occasions are terrific. We even have a Christmas party, I'll tell you. The last week of Christmas we have a Christmas party, which is fun for all the kids.

Alistair, Senior Clerk — it's one of his pride and joys to run this and it's very popular.

Orlagh Kelly: He's reached a milestone relatively recently, hasn't he? 50 years. 50 years of clerking. Incredible. Such a lovely, lovely person. I really enjoy talking to him. But 50 years — I'll have to get him on the podcast to see when Alistair first started and where it is all at now. And so in terms of the renovation that you did to chambers, just touching on that lightly, because we mentioned it earlier — and it is beautiful. Anyone who wants to have a look should go to your website and look at it. What was that process like? Was that difficult? Did it present challenges? Has it been worth it? I know on previous occasions we've talked about the fact that you started this pre-Covid, or at least certainly the idea of it, and the expectation then that everyone operated as they had done for decades predominantly from within chambers. And Covid and the pandemic and lockdowns changed how most of the world works, but it definitely changed how the bar works in terms of that working from home pace.

Gordon Walters: Yes, well, in theory, when I started in 2018, it should all have been done and agreed. That's what I was told at my interview. My very first meeting was actually cancelling the arrangements we had with the building that we were moving into because it was just not going to work.

So they had a lot of work gone into this before. I think maybe even 10 years of work gone in before we actually moved into this place. And we'd set up a strategic committee and accommodation committee to decide what sort of place we wanted — what we wanted, what sort of place we wanted to be. Did we want to stay in it? Did we want to go back into the Inn? Did we want to go to wood-panelled offices? Did we want to go corporate and all that? So an awful lot of work had gone into this.

And that all tied in with knowing when our lease was going to expire on the building we were in at the time. So I came in when a lot of work had been done, but then a lot of it had to be unfortunately undone because the time and effort being put in just wasn't going to work. The building just was never going to produce what we wanted because we have a specific demand. So I then got involved with our former head of chambers, Sir Andrew Ritchie, and another member, Stevenson, and we just searched around and I think in total it was about 65 buildings we looked at to find the one that we wanted. And a peculiarity of DEKA is we like having an outdoor space, you know, a rooftop — that's for us. And we had one in the old place called the Martini Terrace. So we were also looking for places that could replicate that sort of thing, which does start to restrict you a little bit. But anyway, we found this place.

And we found it again at the right time. The landlord was keen to find somebody, so we actually got it just at the right time at the right price. I've said that if it had been a month later we wouldn't have done it, because we actually signed the lease on the 6th of December 2019. Now a month later we'd have known that Covid was going to be doing all it was doing and we probably would have put things on ice at the time. But anyway, we'd already signed, so we committed to it.

And we actually did the fit-out during Covid, which was good because we didn't have to worry about the members. We didn't have to relocate members anywhere. I mean, part of our budget was to relocate everyone into somewhere that we worked or something like that. So that saved us an awful lot of money, as people were then working from home instead. And we made it quite clear to the contractors who did the building work, the fit-out here, that we did not consider Covid to be force majeure. And they were on a contract and they had to do the work and that's what happened. So I have to say, I never experienced lockdown. I was in here virtually every day when the building works were going on. And we managed to specify it from scratch and we got everything that we wanted. And yeah, it's great. I mean, the downside is we now look at it and in this post-Covid world, you know, silly things like phone handsets — we don't need phone handsets on every desk, people don't use that. We probably don't even need PCs and we've got, you know, 45 PCs with dual screens for members. We wouldn't have done that now if we had been using a laptop. So, and what the big thing we found is that people don't use the space as much as we thought they would. So the attendance rate is really rather low for the number of workstations we have. But what people do need is they need meeting rooms. And initially, in part of the original spec pre-Covid, we only had two video conferencing facilities, which — that's what people want. So we changed some of the open space. We sectioned it off into additional meeting rooms. And so now we've got 10 video suites, which I know isn't a lot compared to some law firms, but 10 video suites for a set of barristers is quite a lot. And they work to a high standard and they're highly used. And you think a lot of the stuff that we do are Joint Settlement Meetings, which will take three rooms. So you've got two JSMs.

That's six rooms gone out in a day. So that's the way we've changed. We've moved into more meetings-based than just providing people with a desk.

Orlagh Kelly: And so I mean, the major thing that strikes me there is how agile you have had to be to continually change your plans to support the world that barristers work in and operate in now — we're in 2024. And it's rare that a set of chambers is set up to develop and move that quickly. And, you know, again, thinking about the decision-making processes and the fact that people are in, for example, buildings that have very long leases that aren't set up to allow for video conferencing. So it certainly appears that you're in a great position to continue to take on whatever comes down the track for the bar. Do you have any thoughts about future challenges or interesting opportunities that are facing the bar, that you're thinking about from your perspective how you can add value?

Gordon Walters: I mean, regulation is without a doubt going to be a major challenge. We're seeing already a number of — we're now needing the largest sets to employ specific compliance officers to deal with the demands primarily of instructing solicitors. I received a questionnaire from an instructing solicitor the other day that would have taken me a week to complete. I mean, the various ISOs that they wanted us to sign up to — it's just going to get bigger and bigger. The problem I see of that is to have somebody who's actually competent to do those sort of rules — proper compliance rules, which I'm talking about your GDPR compliance, your cyber compliance, all the things that come in, not the trivial practice certificates and BMIF, all that — but really to have somebody who's competent to do that, you probably should be paying 60 to 80,000 pounds for somebody competent to do that.

Unfortunately, it's still being done as a bit of a paper exercise. So people are being employed at 20, 30, 40,000 pounds. And that's not achieving anything now. You need to get proper compliance officers in. But to do that, you're going to be a larger set to do that. So whilst I do see the argument, the BSB saying that we're going to regulate you more — even though they shouldn't be, because that's not part of legislation — you're going to have to get really big to really supply these things. And that's the same with cyber now. If you look at cyber insurance, I believe now they won't insure anyone with a turnover below, I think it's 20 million or 25 million, something like that. Well, there's an awful lot of sets out there that are below that sort of turnover. And to be trading nowadays without cyber insurance, that's a really big risk. The outage we had recently — it was tens of thousands of pounds of direct costs we had. And fortunately we were insured and therefore we didn't suffer that loss. So I'm probably rambling again. I think regulation is the big thing. Fortunately — I mean, if you'd asked me maybe a year ago, I would have talked more about the cyber. I think from our perspective, we've gone pretty far ahead. You know, we do have all our members signed up within the Microsoft Intune system.

So we manage everyone's devices, even ones that they own themselves — the BYOD — they're all managed by chambers. I could see in years to come, in 10 years it will definitely happen. I don't know how soon, but it'll be like law firms. You will be given your laptop, you'll be given your iPhone and that's it. It'll have to be that secure. So I see that sort of developing.

But the actual more fundamental things — I'm not on the clerking side, but I see that relationship changing. I think, you know, the days of being involved in protracted phone calls trying to find counsel and agree on counsel — I can see that going in the smaller value cases. That's where things like AI is going to come in, I think, on selecting counsel. I think it's going to come in.

You've also got to think about with all these things about the fair allocation of work. That's all now being documented, so that changes the way that that relationship happens. But I think the bar has got a future. I mean, if I had a significant case that required advocacy, I want a barrister to do it. They are listed advocates and brilliant people and they have the areas of expertise. So there's always going to be demand for excellence. As a chambers, we've always gone for good work, good cases. We're not interested in volume work. We're not like a claim harvester type thing. We want high-value cases that we can apply our excellence to. I dare say public access is not something we've really pushed.

Orlagh Kelly: From my perspective and compliance, I...

Gordon Walters: I have a very negative view of direct access. If I look at — I mean, you assist us with our DSARs and our things, and unfortunately virtually all the DSARs that we have come from the public access cases, and equally complaints, because there's an unrealistic expectation. When you come through an instructing solicitor, the instructing solicitor will manage the expectations. When you come in direct to counsel — and counsel has many strengths — expectation management is really not one of them. Yeah, so I don't see direct access as something that we at the set are going to be focusing on. But how that relationship between instructing solicitor and counsel — with also the clerks in between — develops, that will be interesting.

Orlagh Kelly: Absolutely. Well, I'm glad to hear that you're saying there's a future for the bar. And albeit that that seems to change more quickly than it used to, I guess, with the external pressures of the more global economy that we live in, the cybercrime that we face, the fact that you have to meet lots of requirements from businesses and instructing solicitors that previously were just delighted to get talented counsel. Now they also expect that alongside that, that there's that kind of business operating manner — which, and when you talk about 60 to 80,000 pounds of a salary for a compliance manager, that's a significant cost when it's not necessarily developing the business or creating revenue. So that's difficult for people to think about, you know, when everyone's really thinking about their own practices and their own revenues and how to protect those. It also — in a world where not everyone's paid the same, not all areas of work pay the same dividends — and there are people who have to do publicly funded work that is also extremely vital but not as well paid. Lots of complexities. And I know that the Bar Standards Board and the Bar Council are looking at all of these things, but it's very interesting to hear your perspective. Thank you so much for being a guest and I look forward to having you back again to check if any of your predictions have come true, Gordon.

Gordon Walters: Thank you very much. Nice to speak with you, Orlagh. Nice to have the opportunity. Thank you very much. Thanks. Bye.