In Channel 5′s Manchester-set TV drama, Wing And A Prayer, the city's barristers are shown boldly tackling tougher problems than the southern softies of the BBC's This Life ever dared to face. In real life, too, Manchester is beginning to challenge the capital's dominance.
Although the regional Bar has tended to be seen as lagging behind its London counterparts, times are changing fast. Recently, a number of Manchester sets have been working hard to gain an edge over the local and London competition. And, in the last couple of years, the local Bar has made some important advances.
The first Lord Chancellor's regional legal services committee was established in the city, as part of a programme designed to cover each region to help plan legal aid services. This is a timely development in view of the radical changes proposed on legal aid this year – the committee will bring together the Bar, solicitors and community groups to decide how the region will deal with the proposed reforms.
Another first is the choice of Manchester Metropolitan University's law school to provide the Bar Vocational Course. The course was hugely over-subscribed, with the first 100 students starting last September.
Meanwhile, the Manchester Bar has seen a healthy amount of new activity. Merchant Chambers was established in 1996 as a breakaway commercial set, and now has eight members. Lancaster Buildings was founded in 1997 as a set specialising in intellectual property, and has grasped the nettle of the civil
justice reforms by producing a guide to the new court rules under the Woolf reforms, which will come into force in April. Belying the traditional view that barristers tend to be technophobes, the guide will also be published on the Internet.
Manchester has an important advantage over other regional Bars – the city has its share of heavy-hitters whom local firms will instruct rather than heading automatically for the London sets.
Barrister Stewart Kneale of Cobden House Chambers is bullish. "The Bar is in a state of flux. The smaller sets are having to rethink their position because of the introduction of block-contracting, and the larger sets will be seen as having the systems and procedures for that work. Generally most sets will grow in size to deal with the changes," he says.
One form that growth is taking is the trend towards mergers in law firms, and Manchester has experienced its share of activity in this area. Bridge Street Chambers and Hollins Chambers merged to produce Cobden House Chambers. With more than 40 barristers, it is the third largest in the city, after Deans Court and 40 King Street. Soon to move next door into four-storey purpose-built premises is the silks-only set Byrom Street Chambers, which itself merged with a London set, 22 Old Buildings, in 1997. The set at 40 King Street has also opened up an annexe of the chambers in Leeds to service the commercial work there.
There continue to be rumours of mergers or associations within the city and even across the Circuit. As one senior junior comments: "There are talks about mergers, but these
can be very delicate, and there is often the feeling that a merger is not the best solution unless there is a very obvious and identifiable
advantage."
Another argument put forward for merger is that a large mixed set gives both solicitors and their clients the option of getting all their advice and advocacy under one roof. However, that does not take into account the fact that solicitors looking to cherry-pick counsel will be prepared to go beyond one set – and even city boundaries – to find the barrister they want.
One leading junior says: "Barristers are concerned at how best to respond to meet the pressures for greater specialisation in the regions, but that is also an issue for sets in London."
According to Kneale, sets are merging partly as a response to what is happening with the law firms and partly, in his set's case, to cover almost all areas of practice, including criminal, family, PI, chancery and commercial disputes.
Cobden House has also been recruiting, with criminal barrister Richard Little joining from Kenworthy's Chambers and another barrister set to join shortly. Kneale adds that the recruitment drive is two-fold, as there has also been a recent trend for solicitor-advocates to switch to the Bar.
The profile of the local Bar has been raised with the appointment of the new Bar Council chairman, Dan Brennan QC, who originally set up chambers at 18 St John Street. Other local heavyweights in the public spotlight include Richard Henriques QC, who is set to act for Harold Shipman, the doctor accused of murdering a number of his former patients. However, the current success of the Manchester Bar is no overnight sensation, rather the result of 20 years' effort to keep the work in Manchester.
"The tide has turned, the regional Bar is no longer seen as second-rate," Kneale says. "Now, it is not so much that there is a threat from the London Bar, but the other way around, with barristers here seen as very strong and very able.
"The recent anecdotal record of returned briefs from London silks and juniors has not done the Bar generally much good. People are more open to the fact that an able barrister can go anywhere, and one of the main advantages is that solicitors are, by and large, guaranteed to get the barrister they want here."