Editorial January 2007

In my first week back after the New Year, I ended up in a Magistrates Court in Essex making a plea in mitigation. This was a departure from the comfortable circuit of County Courts which are so familiar to the PI lawyer. The experience caused me to reflect on the merits of a general practice. The modern trend is for lawyers to specialise in narrow areas of law. Certainly in the City, true general practitioners are becoming endangered species. In some respects this is a loss, both to the profession and to the public.

Of course, each area of law has its own peculiarities. Some of these cannot be gleaned from text books. This is where the specialist holds the advantage. An example of this in PI law is the question of costs. The PI practitioner is used to arguing costs points at the end of each hearing. Hard experience means that we are familiar with which arguments are likely to succeed, and which will merely irritate the Judge. A newcomer to PI may lack this judgement. Moreover the law itself seems to get ever more specialised. Whole text books are written about subjects that until recently would only have merited a chapter in a more general text.

Nevertheless the core skills of the lawyer apply to any area of law. Legal research, drafting and most importantly communication are substantially the same in any branch of the law. There is no substitute for a broad range of experience in terms of being able to offer a complete service to clients. Often clients have legal problems that are not easily pigeonholed into a particular specialism. Personal injury itself may overlap with employment, health and safety or criminal law.

On a personal level, occasionally being thrust into the melee of an unfamiliar area of law is useful experience. It teaches, or perhaps reminds, how to research novel points swiftly and accurately. It is useful practice for the advocate to appear unflappable in any situation because even on home ground new points can occur.

Unfortunately these gentler benefits look set to be swamped by the onrushing tide of specialisation.

Aidan Ellis

Please note that we have added a section at the end of the Law Journal written by the self-styled “Charon QC” who writes about his life in an increasingly popular blog which can be found at http://charonqc.wordpress.com.  It provides an eclectic mixof law, humour and contemporary interest ranging from politics to sport.  Above all, it gives us access to perhaps the best character to emerge from the law since Rumpole.  We are therefore honoured that Charon QC has generously agreed to write exclusively for us each month.  This is the first example that we are aware of that a blawger (law blogger) has been given his own column in an official law journal.