The seductive appeal of aggressive advocacy: and why you should avoid it

It has been a wretched couple of weeks for radical barrister Michael Mansfield’s Took’s Chambers. Not only has the set announced that it is to disband for financial reasons but both Mr Mansfield and one of its senior members Lawrence McNulty have been in trouble with judges for the way they conduct their advocacy.

Mr Mansfield, appearing for the family of Mark Duggan who was shot by police, sparking a summer of urban riots was upbraided by Judge Cutler, a shrewd Crown Court judge brought in to sit as a temporary coroner. In fact the initiative seems to have come not from Cutler but from the jury, some of whom appear to have felt that Mr Mansfield was becoming needlessly aggressive in his cross-examination of a Police Officer.

But the relatively mild and polite judicial criticism to which Mr Mansfield was subjected was, though well publicised, insignificant compared to the obloquy heaped by the Court of Appeal on the head of his colleague Lawrence McNulty over his conduct in a 2011 terrorism trial in which he had defended one Munir Farooqi. Continue reading “The seductive appeal of aggressive advocacy: and why you should avoid it”