Years of successive central government neglect and ill-conceived, swingeing cuts to legal aid, has resulted in an increase of unrepresented people in a court system that is already at breaking point. Regardless of government spin, this is the truth of the matter, as many thousands of lawyers at the coal face of the UK justice system will attest.

The appearance of one or more unrepresented parties in litigation is an increasingly common sight in courts the length and breadth of England and Wales. A BuzzFeed News report from October 2019 found that the number of people seeking support in court because they have no lawyer to represent them has risen by 520% since 2011. In the family courts, statistics show that in 80% of cases only one party will have legal representation.

Lacking the assistance of trained lawyers, often through no fault of their own, these litigants in person (LiPs) are without the equality of arms needed to effectively pursue their action and, as a consequence, can increase the duration of a dispute, create real difficulties for judges to remain impartial, and make it a challenge for counsel to adhere to their professional responsibilities.

In 2019, The Legal 500 and 1GC|Family Law hosted a roundtable discussion with barristers practising in areas deeply affected by the rising tide of LiPs.

Stories abound of how LiPs slow down an already creaking justice system. In November, for example, Mr Justice Pushpinder Saini in the High Court struck out a claim against Google after the claimant LiP ‘wasted substantial amounts of court time involving ten judges or masters’, by steadfastly refusing to identify themselves.

Yet away from the relatively palatial surroundings of the High Court, regional courts and tribunals are creaking under the pressure of unrepresented litigants. ‘Deadlines are being breached, evidence is just all over the place, and judges have simply stopped telling people off about it,’ remarks 29 Bedford Row’s Max Lewis. ‘They do not have the energy. As long as [papers] is there on time, as long as they can read it at trial, that is fine.’

‘Admissibility is the key one,’ adds Five Paper’s David Mold. ‘The number of times you turn up to court and the LiP has handed a document to the judge, not to you. The judge says, “Have you seen this?” You have a look at it and it is the entire bundle of without prejudice correspondence – they just get away with it. Obviously the judge says they have not read it, but they have had to.’ In addition to the added time that must be taken to accommodate LiPs with the explanation of court and litigation procedure, there, quite obviously, exists a distrust between litigants and the trained lawyers they find themselves against. Counsel are often accused of being in ‘cahoots’ with judges and litigants refuse to negotiate ahead of hearings. Accusations and allegations of lawyers acting ‘inappropriately’, usually without any evidence or basis, is the order of the day in many courts, making it increasingly difficult for barristers to do their jobs, especially if the complaints are followed-up on by their regulator, the Bar Standards Board.

And if the situation sounds bad in court, spare a thought for the poor solicitors who play a key role in the litigation process. ‘Corresponding with LiPs is impossibly difficult for solicitors,’ remarks one barrister. ‘We only get LiPs for a day or two. Solicitors have to deal with them day in, day out. I hear horror stories of 35 emails received over the weekend from a LiP, and we are just trying to agree the contents of a bundle.’

As the numbers of LiPs rise, various institutions, including the Law Society and the UK Supreme Court, have been forced to publish guidance on how lawyers should engage with unrepresented litigants. In short, lawyers are advised to behave in a professional, cooperative, and courteous manner, and to avoid using technical or legal language in court. But this is easier said than done.

‘You can have a junior barrister who is put in a situation where they have to make a difficult call about how to deal with a LiP. You have professional risk,’ says Piers Pressdee QC of 29 Bedford Row.

Judicial bias?

The whole process of dealing with LiPs not only places counsel on a tightrope, but also judges, who must try to effectively manage emotionally charged and complex cases, support vulnerable litigants, and yet, all the while, remain impartial.

‘Judges simply do not have the resources to stop a LiP just rambling on and doing whatever they want,’ says one barrister. ‘It makes it impossible to advise your clients, because all your tactical points go out the window when you are against a LiP. You say, “Well, actually, you have not complied with any of these rules”, but the wrong judge will turn every hearing into a small claim with no rules, no witness statements; it is the Wild West and the judge will just say, “Well, it is a litigant in person, so I think we are going to give them an opportunity to speak”.’

Published in March 2018, the Equal Treatment Bench Book tells judges that LiPs ‘should not be seen as an unwelcome problem for the court or tribunal’ and warns against ‘a thoughtless comment, throwaway remark, unwise joke or even facial expression may confirm or create an impression of prejudice’. By contrast, in Global Corporate Ltd v Hale, the Court of Appeal criticised His Honour Judge Matthews’ attempt to show that the High Court was dealing with both parties fairly. The appeal judges said HHJ Matthews had gone too far in cross-examining the represented defendant in a ‘highly leading’ and ‘inappropriate’ way. ‘[He] went too far in attempting to counter any perceived imbalance or inequality of arms,’ said Lord Justice Coulson.

1GC|Family Law’s Joseph Moore believes ‘there is a sense judges are terrified of being appealed for having ridden roughshod over a LiP’.

‘My heart goes out to these poor judges,’ agrees Lewis. ‘In family law, you now have many cases in which both sides are LiPs, and if you are the judge that must be impossibly difficult to manage. Not least, the drafting of a complicated order following a complicated case is going to have to be done by a judge.’

In the employment tribunal it is generally an advantage to be a LiP, says Devereux Chambers’ Kate Balmer. ‘That is not to say the LiPs win, because quite often they do not, necessarily, have a good case, but they do get more airtime and a lot more assistance than they would if they were represented’. This, she says, contrasts starkly with her tax practice. ‘Tax tribunals are more formal. The advocacy is more formal, the judges play slightly less, in my experience, to LiPs, whereas in the employment tribunal it is relatively conversational and so you do get the judge probably more able to step in and assist the litigants.’

You got a friend in me?

Considering the challenges LiPs represent it is, therefore, unsurprising that judges are increasingly willing to accept any help they can get, even if that causes even greater headaches. According to Outer Temple Chambers’ Sarah Crowther QC: ‘Judges are bound to want to reach out to assistance in court, whether they call themselves McKenzie friends or not, simply through necessity. If they are faced with an anxious, ill-informed LiP who needs help and is not presenting their case very well, then I think it is inevitable that the courts will be wanting, instinctively, to give permission to the informal assistant to give that assistance.’

For the uninitiated, a McKenzie friend (MF) is defined as someone who provides moral support and ‘quietly assists’ a LiP in court. When 1GC’s Matthew Fletcher started out, MFs were, ‘generally friends of the litigant, they did not say anything, and they helped with their papers’.

However, in the legal aid vacuum created by successive government cuts, a new breed of MF has emerged – unregulated, unqualified, and often uninsured individuals who charge litigants for advice at rates sometimes in excess of qualified lawyers. Some, it is alleged, even hold themselves out to be qualified lawyers and seek to directly negotiate with counsel or indulge in advocacy before a judge. Neither of which they are entitled to do.

In his 2016 annual press conference, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the then Lord Chief Justice, referenced how some MFs in the immigration space were providing ‘advice that is simply wrong and are preying on vulnerable people’, making him ‘very, very cautious about non-lawyers who try to assist vulnerable people – there is a very real risk of exploitation’.

Bob Neill MP, chairman of the Justice Committee, recently told The Daily Telegraph that regulation needs to be tightened, adding that he would back a ban on fee-charging MFs. ‘If you are paying for a lawyer, you should get a lawyer,’ he said. ‘They hold themselves out as quasi-solicitors for payment which is very different from the traditional idea of McKenzie as a workplace colleague or trade union representative going along as a defendant’s friend.’

Likewise, 33 Chancery Lane’s Amanda Pinto QC used her inaugural speech as chair of the Bar Council to call for a crackdown on ‘unregulated’ MFs who provide clients with ‘completely wrong advice’.

‘We are very concerned at the growth in the number of paid McKenzie friends who are unregulated, untrained, and yet demand money for their intervention – often from the most vulnerable litigants,’ she said.

‘A McKenzie friend is now a burden, rather than a benefit,’ Fletcher tells fivehundred, while Hardwicke’s Colm Nugent goes further, describing them as ‘an absolute curse’.

‘LiPs sometimes do not really have the option of whether to be LiPs or not; MFs do and they are people who are often prey on the most vulnerable,’ Nugent adds. ‘The difficulty is not that they are incompetent, and they almost always are – it is that they are taking money from people and there is no redress when things go wrong. There is no insurance. They are not regulated by anybody, they have no obligations to the court, to their clients or to themselves.

‘McKenzie is a family case, and MFs arose in circumstances where it was the provision of assistance of a non-business model. The problem is the use of payment, other than expenses. One I was involved in, he was charging £250 an hour, plus 25% of the damages. You are not entitled to charge money for the provision of medical services if you are not a doctor. You are not entitled to do it if you are not a financial service provider. Why are you entitled to do it if you are not a lawyer?’

Nugent is not alone with his concerns about the public being exploited by some MFs, but other barristers stressed that not all MFs are bad. ‘There are the ones who provide a valuable service at the Personal Support Unit, and they are actually very helpful, but then the other end are the sharks,’ remarks Mold.

Fletcher adds: ‘I have had very good MFs come along with very anxious people, who have put forward a case which seemed, in my view, unlikely to be successful. Over a period of time we have come to an agreed arrangement with the assistance of the MF, who has calmed down the greater excesses and explained things to [the LiP] in a way that they felt comfortable with, and everyone has come away with a good result. I have also had the opposite experience.’

And yet, despite knowing the issues MFs present the ‘courts seem to be ignoring all those authorities and practice directions’ that relate to MFs, according to Fletcher. ‘You always used to get a little spiel [explaining their role and limitations] read by the judge to the McKenzie friend, I have not heard that said in years now.’

The issue of lack of funding is not the only reason litigants are turning to MFs: ‘Clients have gone to them precisely because they are not lawyers, and precisely because they tout themselves as somebody who will play on the margins and not play by the rules,’ observes one family barrister, while a housing barrister adds, ‘it’s not just the ones that get paid; it’s the crusaders who are the ones who really have an effect on my cases’. ‘There was one who declared himself a “Freemen on the Land”, so was not subject to the laws of the United Kingdom. He was a pure cartoon character who came in wearing a beret and camouflage jacket, and he would talk these very vulnerable tenants up into resisting access for their gas to be done. Those are the people that stick with you.’

Yet the consequences for MFs who misbehave, rather than just make a spectacle of themselves, are serious. As another barrister regales, one MF ‘had been picked up a couple of times by judges, because he was running this organisation with a sort of solicitor-like notepaper. Later, I learned that he and his wife had forged a psychiatric report. She had pretended to be a psychologist and produced a report on behalf of a [fee-paying] client and sold it as an independent expert; they went to jail for perverting the course of justice. It was quite remarkable.’

Things become even more complicated when dealing with particularly vulnerable LiPs. A 2017 study by researchers from Cardiff and Bristol universities revealed how several fee-charging MFs admitted to seeing, ‘a surprisingly high proportion of clients with particular needs and vulnerabilities, including mental health issues and learning difficulties’. ‘The biggest problem is the LiP who you believe has mental-health and capacity issues,’ says one roundtable participant. ‘Since they do not have a solicitor on board to flag up at the first hearing we need to get a capacity assessment, the judges are sometimes reasonably reluctant to [do this] and so you can get quite a long way down the line with LiPs who are really struggling to run their own litigation.’

Protection fears

If the day-to-day mental and emotional grind of dealing with LiPs and MFs was bad enough, ‘you also have the actual risk of danger,’ says Pressdee QC.

In just a few recent examples, 2013 saw a man attack his wife while representing himself in family proceedings; in 2015, Mr Justice Mostyn waived the right to privacy of the parties before him to expose the ‘extreme’ conduct of the LiP husband, who threatened to kill his wife and had assaulted one of her former lawyers; and, in early 2019, an LiP was removed from a court after throwing a copy of the civil procedure text at a barrister.

Lewis observes that, ‘family law seems to attract a particular kind of litigant, largely because it is the nature of the issues you are dealing with; emotions run high, and if you do not have that level of self-control to begin with, it spills out early, quickly, and often’, but other barristers have also experienced instances when emotions have boiled over into violent outbursts.

A male barrister offers up how a LiP ‘just completely snapped when the circuit judge read out his judgment, and was fronting up as if he wanted to start a fight. I felt the need to stand up and get between the LiP and my client. He kept on coming and I made the worst decision I could ever make, which was to use the phrase, “Calm down. You are just embarrassing yourself”. Then, unsurprisingly, I got a fairly firm head-butt.’ Devereux’s Balmer recalls how she ‘had one [LiP] with a meat cleaver’ attend an employment tribunal. The issue of safety takes an even more ominous tone outside of court. One, female barrister reveals how she was stalked by a LiP and their partner. ‘The partner sent me and my solicitor, who was also female and relatively young, abusive emails and also engaged in Facebook stalking of us. The police were relatively useless. It was “only” correspondence but it did become very abusive and there is not a lot of protection. In the end the police just issued a protection from harassment warning.’

And then you have the issue of vexatious complaints brought against counsel. One barrister recalls how, after a LiP deliberately tripped over counsel’s foot and stumbled, they ‘went to the police, accusing me of assaulting him – I phoned Bar Mutual to say [how] it happened; they said they would not cover me because it was a criminal assault, so I was on my own. They could have had a better understanding of some of these issues. It’s amazing how quickly these things can escalate’.

Participants of the roundtable were pretty unanimous in calling for greater security in the civil courts, the arrangements at which, unlike the often overzealous Crown courts, would best be described as ‘lax’. However, counsel were also quick to stress the need for a balance as increased security can have unintended consequences, as Five Paper’s Sam Phillips explains: ‘I had an appeal where one of the grounds was that the judge required security to be in court because we had let him know [the LiP had] a history of violence; all of a sudden now the court is prejudiced against [the LiP] as well as the evil barrister.’

Practical advice

As Phillips observes, ‘there is a huge lack of training for the junior end’, in terms of dealing with the unrepresented in court. So, what advice would counsel at our roundtable give to those yet to cross paths with a LiP or MF?

First, don’t be too sceptical about your opponent. ‘You have to be courteous, rather than going, “Oh great, a McKenzie friend”,’ offers one barrister. ‘Go in with, “Actually, I want to listen to what you have to say, whether we can reach some kind of rapprochement here”; be polite and listen.’

Lewis is in agreement: ‘The very first interaction you have with them very often sets the tone for how it is going to be. If you walk in, “Hi. I represent Bob. I cannot give you any advice, but if you want me to look anything up or you want me to email anything to you, just let me know. I have obligations to you”. Make that quite clear. That first interaction really matters.’ ‘Explain that your first duty is to the court and that you cannot mislead the court,’ says Moore. ‘What is difficult is to avoid stepping into giving them advice. Obviously, we are not allowed to do that. You have to use your own judgement, but it is very difficult because really you want to say, “Look, the case you are running is not going to work” – they will not believe you.’

‘Really look at a case from both sides,’ offers Hardwicke’s Jasmine Murphy. ‘Look at it from the LiP’s side. What arguments should they be making, if they were properly advised? In court, the risk of keeping quiet about those [potential] arguments is, of course, that that may set up for an appeal. It is a fine line to walk, because you have your duty to the court, you have the duty to your client, but I will always try to address and think of the arguments that they could have made if they had had legal advice, and address those, so that I can box off any recourse to an appeal they might have. Think about what the LiP should have argued.’

Balmer adds: ‘Be careful to make sure conversations with a LiP are recorded in writing, even if just taking a note after the event saying “As we discussed”. The need to be careful when communicating is particularly acute in relation to discussions on settlement because engaging in such discussions can sometimes wrongly be perceived as pressuring a litigant to drop their case.’ ‘You must listen properly to LiPs, because they will not express their case in the way that a lawyer would,’ says Crowther QC. ‘You have to work harder to understand, and that falls on you, as the individual, to really allow them to explain to you what it is that is their grievance, why they feel that they want to fight their case, what it is they are unhappy about. Maybe that is what that touches on, if you can actually give them the chance.’

And, she adds: ‘If you are a junior barrister, and you are in trouble at court, and you are worried, put the email out on chambers-all – people will help. There will be somebody at court, even from another firm.’ The issue presented by LiPs and MFs is not set to disappear any time soon. While reversing legal aid cuts would alleviate the strain on the court system, as well as the burden placed on counsel, a return to pre-2010 spending (at the very least) is not on the cards. Despite Conservative Party manifesto promises of increased spending on the justice system, legal aid was not a feature of the Tories’ 2019 election campaign.

Indeed, the Ministry of Justice’s Post-Implementation Review of Part 1 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO), published in February 2019 states: ‘The government acknowledges that litigants in person require more support, to help individuals navigate through the justice system. However, it is not accepted that the justice system cannot function with the increased presence of litigants in person. Access to a lawyer is not always the correct or most affordable answer.’ On the evidence presented, many barristers would disagree.

Georgina Stanley (GS): How do you see the Manchester legal market right now? Where do you see opportunities for growth?

Ros Bever, Irwin Mitchell (RB): Manchester is a vibrant city – it is very busy. We are attracting work from outside of the region, and I think that’s a consequence of both the rates and the expertise that we have here. It’s really healthy that we’ve got new competitors coming in – it shows there’s investment in the city, and I think we’re really well placed because of our commuting connections and also because we have lots of pockets of affluent areas surrounding the city.

GS: Robert – what about from the perspective of an independent firm?

Robert Levy, Kuits (RL): We haven’t found that the increase in the number of law firms in Manchester has had an adverse effect on us. In many ways, we’ve found that the middle market has opened up as a result of the competition at the higher end. We’ve very firmly pinned our colours to the SME mast and we’re finding that there’s plenty to go at there.

I think the increased profile of Manchester – and the increase in the number of firms coming here – has meant that we are picking up business from outside of Manchester; London in particular; not because we’re cheaper, but because as a Manchester firm, when you show up in London, potential clients see you somewhat differently to how they used to. They’re not picking us so much on cost – in fact there are London firms offering lower rates than we do- but because Manchester suddenly has resonance.

GS: Is that something other people see?

Michael Clavell-Bate, Eversheds Sutherland (MCB): Yes – this is unquestionably the second legal centre in the country, and every firm will say that they are seeing growth year-on-year. Whether they’re independent, international, or national, there is a place for everyone here. The market for new entrants has been interesting and is an endorsement of opportunities in the North West. Freshfields’ arrival a few years ago was interesting. Of course, there are obvious differences in the cost base but they chose Manchester with wider opportunities in mind – I think they’ve been very smart in this regard.

GS: Does that concern anybody?

Niall Innes, Mills & Reeve (NI): I think the opposite actually. The fact people like that are coming is reinforcing the feeling that this is the second city and people take it seriously, so there’s opportunity. It’s giving credibility to the importance of the region, rather than concern. At the moment the pie is getting bigger and it’s very competitive, but there’s enough work around for everybody. There are a lot of reasons to be confident.

MCB: It is often said that the market is saturated in Manchester’s legal sector. But that fails to recognise that the legal sector here is not just servicing North West clients. Firms have aligned themselves by reference to different strategies. We have incredibly important clients here doing impressive high-end, strategic work but we’re doing work for clients outside Manchester too – national and international clients and work networked from our global business.

GS: What do people think about the accountants – how much of a threat do you think they now pose?

Peter Jackson, Hill Dickinson (PJ): We’ve all got to be realistic and accept that they are now competitors – in this city they’ve made well-known, credible hires. It’s a bit of a difficult position we find ourselves in, because many of us work with the accountants, with clients, so to consider them the enemy all of a sudden would be foolish on our part. But they are very well-run businesses. They recruit incredible people. We’d be foolish if we didn’t see them as proper new entrants to the marketplace.

Sam Mabon, Brabners (SM): There’s the obvious challenge around independence of auditors, but there is also the difficulty at the outset for accountants being able to offer a full service when they’re focused initially around specific complementary disciplines. This of course in time may change, but it requires a significant investment and I’m not at this stage convinced they want to provide the complete, full service offering.

GS: Have they made as much ground as you were expecting?

MCB: You have to recognise they are serious competitors. They’ve been trying to eat the food off our table for decades. There are regulatory challenges for them, and conflicts are a big issue, but the advantage for them, of course, is their deep pockets and willingness to invest and adapt. Law firms have many advantages but those embracing change, particularly around tech, alternative legal service provider models, and so on, are the firms that will face the threat from accountants head on and grow market share.

Mike O’Connor, Addleshaw Goddard (MOC): They’re here to stay – we collaborate with them around clients and sectors, and sometimes we’ll compete against them. I see it as part of a rich economy – I don’t see it as a threat, but we do see a greater degree of collaboration happening these days with other legal providers as well, so that will just be part of that.

PJ: We’re seeing them pitching against us for work that you wouldn’t necessarily expect them to want, such as work for SMEs. They’re just like any other competitor – they’re not all-powerful.

MCB: They do tend to be far better than us at cross-selling their services – they do it with brutal efficiency and we have a lot to learn from them. They also develop medium and long term strategies which law firms tend to avoid.

GS: Do you think there are going to be more firms coming into Manchester?

RL: If it’s acknowledged as the second city commercially, I don’t think firms will be able not to be here. I think major law firms will want to be in both London and Manchester.

GS: What impact are all of these new entrants having on the local recruitment market?

Suzanne Benson, Trower & Hamlins (SB): We have a large London base, but we’ve been in Manchester for 45 years. The new entrants have made it more of a challenge to differentiate yourselves from some of the other London firms who’ve come up here, but I always try to be as clear as I can to potential new recruits that our Manchester office is not a north-shoring base, as there is an issue from an applicant’s point of view about how attractive that is.

GS: So how do you differentiate yourself?

SB: We look at how we word our adverts, our communications, and our social media, to make sure we’re getting the right message out. We are an international firm with eight offices, four of which are throughout the UK. We want to get out the national message – that we work for big national clients and we work in an integrated national way – but at the same time make it clear to people who we see as potential future partners that they’re going to need their own client base and opportunities in the local market.

Virginia Clegg, DAC Beachcroft (VG): For those of us who operate in the regions, there’s a very important message about the quality of work and experience that our young lawyers can receive. That can be something to do with the size of the deals that we’re doing; whilst we might be doing very big deals, they can get a lot of experience with smaller deals rather than just be part of the big machine doing the very big job that’s housed in the South.

NI: There’s a lot to be said for the experience lawyers can get here, because there’s really good work with good clients and you see a lot of people who don’t want to be in London and will choose to be here. But you also see a lot of people who have done their time in London and have got connections here who are coming back. They’re getting a similar standard of work here; maybe with less noughts on it, but the quality of what they’re doing is really good and the life around here is, in my view, much better, and that’s a real draw. So it’s a difficult recruitment market, but there’s a lot to sell to people who are interested.

GS: With regards to the more junior end of the spectrum, are there particular challenges about recruiting in Manchester?

Rob Elvin, Squire Patton Boggs (RE): The competition has increased – It’s more difficult to recruit because there are more firms chasing the really good people. But the city has a lot more going for it than other cities – when you advertise for a decent job you’re getting candidates who are in Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, or Birmingham wanting to come and work here. Differentiation depends on your firm. At Squire Patton Boggs we’ve been lucky enough to rely upon an international element for some years – that does attract younger lawyers.

GS: What about if you don’t have that sort of thing to offer? Chris, how are you finding it at Slater Heelis?

Chris Bishop (CB), Slater Heelis: The great thing we’ve got in Manchester is that a lot of the bigger firms have got good lawyers who after a number of years maybe want something different. The larger firms are great businesses, but sometimes people look at a firms like ours with 150 people, where you can get to know everybody, and it appeals because it’s so personal; perhaps for people at a stage in life where they fear burnout, or they’ve got young families.

RL: People are opting into a different culture, and that works for everybody because the right people end up in the right firms.

GS: Talking about culture, how is agile working changing business? Do you think it will ultimately reduce the need for firms to maintain a network of offices across the North West?

MCB: Yes, it’s going to reduce the real estate requirement, without a doubt. The buzz word these days is ‘agile’. Our average occupation in Manchester on any given day is around 65-70%. That not just down flexible working/working from home but a work force that is much more mobile. The traditional working day enforced for all is no good for clients, our people or the environment and commercially, it is a broken model.

RE: Processing of work can be done wherever, including at home, but we often talk to partners about how the winning of work is rarely done from the kitchen. You’ve got to be out and about. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be in your office, but you don’t cross-sell much if you’re not with your colleagues talking about opportunities, and that’s where the challenge is, to make sure people are spending enough time in the office to keep collaboration at a level where it creates work. We’ve created a strategic group across different levels of the office. What we’re trying to do is get support functions like IT to work with lawyers and partners strategically. It’s about getting people together and encouraging more engagement; making people feel that they have a role to play in setting the strategy.

CB: Mental wellbeing is another concern around home working. If somebody’s at home, under pressure to perform, and they’re working on Sunday night, who’s going to tell them to switch off?

GS: So how do you make that balance work?

PJ: There’s an irony that flexible working sometimes requires more hands-on management than just having a simple policy of coming to work in the office in the morning and going home when you finish. What we’re doing now is we’re making things sacrosanct that were more flexible in the past.

MOC: We trialled flexible working in my team, and what we found was people like me were fine about it. It tends to work for people who’ve got young families but those people who don’t have children, who live in the city centre – and there are lots of them – they just want to work at their desk.

VC: To assume that working from home is something young lawyers aspire to do is wrong. They actually want to come to work simply because it gives them a working environment that’s acceptable to them. I don’t think resistance on the part of senior people to their teams working flexibly is an age thing either. Some of my younger, most tech-enabled partners want their teams in front of them.

RL: There are other challenges with regards to millennials – one is that I’m not sure that when they grow up they want to be us, and also, there are many more opportunities for them to do other things outside of the law. That’s a massive challenge for us because if the smartest and the brightest decide that the law isn’t for them, then we’ve all got a problem.

GS: Looking around the corner to what’s likely to happen post-Brexit, how well do you think the Manchester legal market is going to adapt?

PJ: Many clients are saying to us what’s stopping them doing business now is uncertainty, and once they have that degree of certainty back, and they know what the rules are in the game that they’re playing, then it’s back to business. If that’s the case, will we necessarily see any downturn? Should we not even be optimistic that changing in the rules is actually good for lawyers, at least in the short term? Regulatory changes often drive things our way – so if there’s positive impact, then I think Manchester’s well suited to deal with it.

MOC: The city is such a different place to that of ten or 15 years ago. It’s an international city on the world stage now, which attracts business opportunities that were not there before. With Brexit, I think there will be some transactions that will just be put back six or none months, but they’ll come back again.

MCB: There remains a serious risk of a no deal Brexit – that leaves us in precarious position with constant talk of a major recession in front of us. Firms conducting business in multiple jurisdictions, who are nimble and have a broad practice are likely to be more resilient than those dependant on single regions.

RB: the level of expertise that we’ve got here will insulate us to a certain extent because I think we will pick up work from London.

SB: I think undoubtedly there will be some sort of Brexit shock, but it could be less focused on Manchester than on London. I know some investors are looking more at Manchester and other northern cities as a more attractive location for investment and business opportunities, which is also testament to the recent level of growth across the region.

RE: You have to be realistic, but I’ve been here 22 years, and I’ve never dreamed of living anywhere else in the country, having spent half my life in the South East. It’s much more cosmopolitan, in my view it’s got much more get-go than other northern cities, and it’s got a proper international airport and two of the biggest football clubs in the world. We’ve got things here which make us feel confident and can keep you going through a recession.