The Defence Brief

My typical view of the AXON website Legal practice, at least contentious legal practice, is all about evidence. One side brings a case by putting to the court and their opponent some evidence that they say proves their case. The other side responds by seeking to exclude, undermine or rebut that evidence, usually with evidence of their own. Exchanging evidence, call it discovery or disclosure as you will, is the all-important key to winning a case. Effective disclosure leads one side to thrown in the towel and give up. Failing to disclose leads to a loss in court, at best, and a wasted costs order at worst. Since evidence is so important you’d think somebody would have thought up a way to get that evidence to the people who need to see it quickly and efficiently while preserving the security of the information. I manage it in my firm through the use of encrypted uploads to secure cloud services and software that lets me to email the links to encrypted files that magically d...

Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions I wrote recently about the spate of acid attacks and the proposals for dealing with them suggested by some MPs . Today, I want to talk about the comments by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders. Ms Saunders comments appear to show that she is somebody who has no understanding of the role of the CPS or the law itself. Now Ms Saunders is a very experienced prosecutor and lawyer. She has risen to the very top of her organisation and I do not for a minute believe that she does not understand what the CPS does or what the law is regarding acid attacks. According to the Guardian newspaper, Ms Saunders said that there is a strong public interest in her authorising the CPS to give out the strongest punishments to acid attackers. I suspect she didn’t say that exactly since it’s not a direct quote and is most likely badly paraphrased by a journalist. But, it’s worth saying that the CPS do not give out punishmen...

Last Friday and today (Monday) I am/was the duty solicitor at Stratford Magistrates' Court.  The role of the duty solicitor is to advise and represent people who are appearing at court but who do not have a solicitor; there are a few more rules about who qualifies and who doesn't, but those aren't important right now. I am currently the custody duty solicitor, which means that I am here to advise and represent anybody arrested by the police and charged over the weekend..  I heard on the news last night that the Metropolitan Police deal with approximately 2,000 offences per day.  Stratford covers the Newham area of east London where I believe I am right in saying that Newham has a higher than average crime rate, although it's not one of the highest crime areas in London.  So, with an average of 4,000 crimes committed over the weekend plus those committed on Friday night that couldn't make it to court on Saturday morning you might expect there to be quite a bit of ...

I'm watching BBC Breakfast and they have a piece about the fact that more girls than boys have joined the Scouts this year for the first time ever. It's good news for the Scouts that they remain so popular, but it got me thinking about the funny way that sexual equality works. When I was a boy the Scouts were exclusively for boys - the handbook may even have still been called "Scouting for Boys".  While I was still a member the UK leadership changed the rules to allow girls to join, but left the choice of whether to admit girls to individual troops.  We had just one enquiry from a girl and the leader asked us to vote whether the troop should admit girls.  The vote was a unanimous no and as I remember the main reason was because we all just wanted somewhere we could all go that was just for us boys (I was about 10 at the time so maybe the reasoning wasn't quite so clearly defined as I recall). Something that has always intrigued me is why there was a call for...