Calling time at the London Bar: black and female barristers lead a 'Brummie Putsch'

For more than 500 years, barristers working in London's rich and privileged chambers have enjoyed an unquestioned dominance over their provincial cousins, who have found themselves frozen out of the cornered markets of the Temple.

But now London's sleepy chambers face a rude awakening as Birmingham, Britain's second largest legal centre, plans an audacious raid on the City's advocates and its lucrative practices.

The challenge is being spearheaded by two newly created "super-chambers" which have aggressively expanded in recent years so that they can now lay claim to being the largest and most multicultural in the country.

The biggest, Number 5 Fountain Court, has already set up a scouting office in the capital and is planning to fill it with London-based barristers who will be clerked from its Birmingham headquarters.

The second, St Philip's, is to remain in Birmingham, where it will boast a group of 140 barristers, creating a chambers a third larger than anything in the Temple.

Such economies of scale and cheaper rents mean the chambers of the West Midlands will be able to undercut the London Bar by offering bargain deals to their clients.

Their typical fees, of between £300 and £400 an hour, are a significant saving from the £500 charged for 60 minutes in the company of a barrister from a leading London chambers. Their size enables them to cater for all manner of cases from criminal to family, whereas smaller London chambers are more likely to specialise.

The "Brummie Putsch", as it is being called, could not have come at a more sensitive time for the London Bar.

This month, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, announced a radical review of the legal profession and, in particular, the restrictive practices of the Bar, which has been accused by the Office of Fair Trading of offering questionable value to the public.

The traditional make-up of the London Bar, which for so long has drawn on Britain's top public schools for its recruits, has also been criticised by a recent report for operating an elite group of chambers from which judicial and QC appointments are almost guaranteed.

Perhaps more worryingly for London's hegemony, there have been signs that barristers are more attracted to the enlightened employment practices of the provinces than the glorified gentlemen's clubs of the capital.

Number 5 and St Philip's have proved particularly attractive to female and ethnic-minority barristers, who see them as more representative of society than their stuffier London counterparts.

Barristers whose faces or attitudes don't fit in London have found a natural home in the provinces. Ekwal Singh-Tiwanna, one of the rising stars of Birmingham's criminal Bar, does not have fond memories of his time in London. "I soon realised London wasn't for me when two of the senior barristers pulled me to one side and suggested the only way I was going to get on was if I changed my name to Edward St John-Twain," he recalls.

Stephanie Brown left her chambers when they refused to be flexible about taking time off after the birth of her first child. "It was a very old-fashioned set, dominated by patriarchal figures who were rather narrow-minded when it came to family- friendly policies."

Number 5 Fountain Court welcomed her warmly and told her she could take as much time off as she needed to care for her family.

Ms Brown, who has been voted the West Midlands' barrister of the year, has since had another child. "We've now got a lot of people who have come here from London and women in particular are flocking to the chambers," she said.

The racial and gender breakdown of these two Birmingham chambers bear out the testimonies of Ms Brown and Mr Singh-Tiwanna, both tenants at Number 5. Of the 121 barristers at Number 5, a quarter are women and a 10th from ethnic minority backgrounds. Similar numbers of women and ethnic-minority barristers are working at St Philip's.

But the national picture, dominated by the London chambers, where almost half of all advocates in England and Wales work, shows that the percentage of black and Asian barristers in the profession is still less than 5 per cent, while the number of women has only just passed the 25 per cent mark. Sceptics believe the true figures are much worse because the only figures available are based on voluntary disclosures made by the chambers.

The Birmingham super-chambers not only offer a better working environment but also charge their tenants considerably less in rent, the fee traditionally levied for the barristers' overheads. At Number 5, this amounts to 15 per cent on the first £200,000 earned, compared with up to 30 per cent for barristers in London.

The economies of scale that the new super-chambers can exploit mean that customers can also expect to pay about half as much for the services of a Birmingham barrister.

This competitive pricing is already a cause for concern at the London Bar, as Birmingham barristers now regularly represent clients at the Court of Appeal, the House of Lords and the Old Bailey.

Tony McDaid, practice director at Number 5, says that the chambers has just been given the contract for a £4bn project for a new port in Southampton after winning against three of the London chambers.

Companies are attracted to the corporate style of the Birmingham super-chambers, whose barristers work from state-of-the-art offices and employ modern clerking practices. This is a far cry from some of the Dickensian premises in the Temple, where even top-flight advocates work from cramped rooms still heated by two-bar electric fires.

Not all London chambers are the same. A few, such as Matrix – where Cherie Booth works – Blackstone, Essex Court and Doughty Street, have recognised the need to develop along more modern commercial lines. But many of their barristers are reluctant to reduce their charging rates.

In contrast, barristers in the provinces are cheaper and able to generate higher turnovers of work than their London rivals. But before the Birmingham chambers threaten to give lawyers a good name, it is worth noting that their star performers still manage to bring in fees of £1m a year.