Top 20 firm hires South Square QC to launch advocacy service

Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) is taking a first step towards a full in-house advocacy offering for clients after bringing in South Square's Stuart Isaacs QC to launch the venture.

The hire, which will see Isaacs joining BLP's City office next month in the newly-created role of head of advocacy, makes the firm only the third in the UK top 50 to recruit a Queen's Counsel direct from the Bar in order to form an in-house 
advocacy service.

Isaacs, who is joining BLP as an equity partner, will be involved with advocacy training and development for the firm's lawyers as well as carrying out advocacy work for BLP clients. He specialises in commercial law with a focus on banking and insurance and will spend around one third of his time in BLP's Singapore arm.

BLP dispute resolution head Jonathan Sacher said: "BLP has for some time been planning to develop the firm's full litigation service, from instruction to trial. That requires us to increase our advocacy offering."

Only a handful of law firms have recruited direct from the Bar, with Stephenson Harwood starting the trend in 1999 with the hire of John Higham QC, who subsequently left to join White & Case.

Most notably, Herbert Smith launched an advocacy unit in 2005 with the hire of 11 Stone Buildings' Murray Rosen QC and Ian Gatt QC, with the practice now housing three partners and five associates. Eversheds, meanwhile, set up an advocacy unit in 2006 with the hire of former Fountain Court barrister Tom Keith as a consultant.

However, Isaacs' hire looks unlikely to prompt a trend at UK rivals, with the remaining top 10 firms confirming that they have no current plans to offer their own QC-led in-house advocacy groups.

Eversheds litigation and dispute management head Ian Gray said: "It works well for certain clients but we haven't expanded any further, despite initial thoughts that we might grow to three or four barristers, because we realised that the appetite isn't there."

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer disputes head Chris Pugh said: "You need to choose the right advocate for the right case and not restrict client choice. Firms with in-house teams will tend to use their in-house advocates even if that is not the best choice. Any in-house advocate would therefore have to be absolutely top-flight."

However, Higham argued: "I think this trend is likely to increase because the Bar is going through an uncertain and potentially difficult time with increased competition from law firms for procuring work."

Further reaction to the movepatricksherrington

"Whenever we've thought about hiring from the Bar, particularly at the senior level, we have concluded that there have been reasons not to go that route primarily because we want to maintain choice and expertise for our clients and we couldn't see a role for someone in-house here who was purely an advocate; we wouldn't be able to keep them busy enough, while ensuring we were offering our clients the best option for their cases.

"The longer-term vision is to have excellent litigators who have an aptitude for, and are good at, advocacy whether they are qualified as solicitors or barristers. While we wouldn't rule out hiring from the Bar therefore, the current thinking is that it is not right for us just at the moment."
Hogan Lovells litigation head Patrick Sherrington

"One advantage to the move that BLP is making is that it will help their solicitors to have a better idea of how cases will run and what lies at the end of the tunnel when taking on disputes that are going to trial. However, I would be surprised if BLP felt it could field in-house people against major individuals at the Bar, as while it is a good move to improve solicitors' advocacy skills, I think it would be hard to compete with barristers that do this day-in day-out."
QC and head of chambers at a leading set

"Doing more advocacy work through hiring barristers in-house is a model that has its pros and cons. We have looked at it from time to time, but for the moment prefer the 'horses for courses' approach of working out whether a QC is needed at all and then picking the right QC for the case in hand from the wide range available."
Clifford Chance head of commercial litigation Simon Davis