Selecting QCs on the basis of advocacy skills is unfit for purpose says new honorary silk, Geoffrey Bindman
Recently I became a silk. I took part in the ceremony in Westminster Hall when new Queen’s Counsel declare their readiness to serve Her Majesty and receive from the Lord Chancellor her “letters patent”—an archaically worded document bearing a large royal seal and encased in a scarlet leather pouch.
The setting evokes the continuity of the English legal tradition and the antiquity of its institutions. It was the scene of the trial of Charles the First and until 1875 of the Court of Queen’s Bench. The Lord Chancellor—Ken Clark heavily disguised in full-bottomed wig and a richly embroidered dressing gown—arrived in procession preceded by a mace bearer.
My appointment is merely honorary—awarded for services to the law outside the courtroom. It does not give me the right to practise as a silk. I would have to become a solicitor-advocate and then a “regular” silk before appearing in the higher courts. The honoraries, of whom on this occasion there were six—three barristers and three solicitors—are
