The first ethical dilemmas you will face during pupillage will relate to your exposure to your pupil mentor’s practice – briefs, clients, and attorneys will be streaming in. You need to seize the opportunity to delve into as many matters as possible, as deeply as possible. How to do so without stepping on toes or inadvertently breaching ethical boundaries?
By allowing you to read a brief and consult with the client, your mentor’s ethical duties are, at least in part, extended to you. The most important duty to keep in mind is the duty to maintain confidentiality. What may seem just a juicy story to tell your fellow pupils about is in fact a pressing drama in the client’s life, told in confidence to your mentor, in order to seek professional advice and help.
By sitting in on the consultation or reading the brief, you are being allowed a ringside seat in the drama. First, it should be said that this is one of the great pleasures of advocate’s practice. You get to meet all kinds of interesting and different people, and hear them speak candidly about their intimate secrets and personal dramas, in the safety of the confessional that is chambers. You will learn about industries and businesses you had no idea existed, and how they work. You will pick up juicy tidbits of gossip and scandal. But you must never forget that your access to this world is a privilege granted to you by your mentor, and the stranger into the room is almost always gracefully accepted by attorneys and clients, some of whom won’t fully understand what a pupil is, but who will trust you nonetheless.
How should you conduct yourself properly and ethically in these situations? Let’s start with the strict ethical rules before moving to more general advice.
The Ethics
The information you are privy to in reading briefs and in attending consultations, is legally privileged. You must respect this by appreciating and protecting the confidentiality of this information. When talking to your mentor about a case, feel free to speak freely and ask questions. When talking to anyone else, don’t mention names or specifics of the case – use generalities and stick to a broad description of the facts, and the legal principles. This approach will protect you against inadvertently disclosing confidential information or breaching other ethical obligations. The duty of confidentiality owed to a client and the nature of legal privilege will be dealt with in due course in the Ethics lectures.
General advice
Read the papers before a consultation.
Don’t speak during the consultation unless specifically invited to do so. Especially in the early days, keep quiet.
Take a comprehensive note of the consultation.
Raise questions with your mentor at an appropriate time. Consider the legal issues and strategy before doing so.
Be polite to clients and attorneys.
You and other advocates
You are free to work with advocates besides your mentor, and it is a good idea to mingle in your group and to engage with other group members, who will ultimately decide on who to admit to the group at the end of pupillage.
Feel free to approach other advocates and ask if they are working on anything interesting at the moment. Hopefully they will invite you to come to court with them or to join them in a consultation. Ask before copying papers, and remember your duty of confidentiality towards any information obtained in the course of reading papers or consulting.
Generally, other advocates will appreciate your constructive input and active engagement in a matter, provided that you work up the brief and contribute. This can secure you a favourable vote on group membership and even future work. But merely being a passenger on a trip to court will usually have the opposite effect.
Don’t be surprised if everyone forgets your name repeatedly, and don’t take it personally. Assume that the counsel you introduced yourself to yesterday has already forgotten your name, and be quick to re-introduce yourself. Eventually you will settle down into the group and people will come to know you over time.
Engage, engage, engage. If you are shy, worried that you are interrupting busy people, and end up hiding in your mentor’s chamber (or worse) in the library with other pupils, you will be saving yourself from some initial discomfort and potential embarrassment. But you will be depriving yourself of your best chance to get a practice started – the goodwill of colleagues in practice, which leads to devilling work, paid work, and ultimately referrals to their attorneys.
Devil, devil, devil. This strange phrase means to work, for free, and in the background, on another counsel’s matter. It may seem unfair or counterintuitive, but it is by far the best way to establish goodwill and to open the door to future paid work. Appreciate that your past talents and experience are not immediately useful to others during pupillage, and that it will take some time to develop your advocacy and drafting skills to the point where you can provide real value. Use the devilling environment as a playground in which you learn the craft, and don’t see it as exploitative. It will eventually lead to good things (including paid devilling work and junior briefs) coming your way, but patience is required. Don’t ask for payment, and if it is offered, err on the side of a low fee. This will endear you to your colleagues. Agressive demands for payment for every hour spent reading, and high bills, will have the opposite effect. You need to adopt a long term strategic outlook to developing a practice, and the goodwill of colleagues is essential to long term success at the Bar.
Hope this helps.
Ethics blog for pupils 