9 Gough Square Website
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Section: About Chambers
Our Profile | Our Values | Our Facilities | Accreditations | Fees | Resolving Complaints | Diversity | Your Privacy | Legal Advice | Legal Notice
We are a leading Common Law set focused on 11 specialist groups within Civil, Criminal and Family practice. Described as "an ambitious set with good bench strength and a selection of talented juniors to lead", our key practice areas include Personal Injury, Clinical and Professional Negligence, Fraud and Serious Crime, General Civil, Employment, Commercial and Property, and Family work.
Based in London, our barristers practise throughout the UK and abroad, with clients ranging across national solicitors, central and local government, small niche practices and the private sector.
After 48 years in the Temple we moved from 2 Dr Johnson's Buildings to Gough Square, among the lanes just off Fleet Street, in 1994. We now occupy the building on the opposite side of this small City square to Dr Johnson's House and our building retains the feel of the Temple with modern facilities and a welcoming reception.
In 2004 we acquired additional premises on the Square to provide more working space for our barristers, supporting our policy of sustained growth and ensuring that clients' needs are met with a range of suitable and available counsel.
Our hallmark is the modern, professional and approachable way in which we deliver legal advice and advocacy skills; our aim is to provide advice that is easily understood and accepted by lay clients and a service that fits precisely with our professional clients' objectives. Our Client Care procedures are regularly reviewed and all barristers and staff recognise the need to provide the highest standards of advice and efficiency of administration. Chambers reinforces its commitment to clients by ensuring a critical mass of skills and experience in our key practice areas and at all levels of call. The acquisition of adjacent premises for future expansion and a professional approach to practice development, administration and staff management, supports this commitment.
Our barristers have access to a wide range of specialist knowledge in Chambers; extensive court work maintains high quality advocacy skills to ensure clients' interests are well represented at court. A team and individual development approach underpins our culture focused on delivering legal advice in a practical way at all levels of sophistication. As part of our commitment to enable solicitors to develop their services, our barristers can travel to clients' premises to attend conferences, offer "pleadings days" and deliver in house seminars on a wide range of subjects.
As a Common Law chambers, we develop our legal and advocacy capabilities across a range of practice areas backed by specialist team-based development. We provide practical legal advice for the benefit of a wide ranging client base - from high level businesses to working people, delivering high quality representation backed by extensive court work and specialist expertise in our core areas.
We have four spacious, modern conference rooms fully equipped with TV, video/DVD, videoconferencing and teleconferencing facilities. The premises have been designed throughout for disabled people.
Significant investment in technology enables our barristers to access the latest on-line legal information and provide an immediate return of urgent work via email. Secure email communication can be provided. Our barristers can access their "desktop" remotely, enabling them to provide increasingly flexible services.
Accreditations
Quality Assurance
One of the first chambers to be awarded BarMark, we have been awarded the Legal Services Commission's Quality Mark for the Bar, recognising our high standard of practice management. The Community Service Logo recognises our commitment to provide access to the public, through our instructing solicitors, to quality information, advice and legal services.
Attorney General's Unified List of Prosecuting Counsel
Several 9 Gough Square barristers have been appointed to the Attorney General's Unified List for the London and South East Circuit. They are:
The Unified List applies to prosecuting counsel for the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office, Department of Trade and Industry, Departments of Work and Pensions/Health, Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency. These departments prosecute cases of great weight, complexity and public importance.
The Attorney General has reminded counsel that "It is a key requirement of a successful criminal justice system that prosecutions should be brought by fair and robust advocates." 9 Gough Square prides itself in having such counsel available.
Chambers UK, A Client's Guide to the UK Legal Profession
9 Gough Square continues to be highly regarded for its Clinical Negligence, Personal Injury, Police Law and Professional Negligence work with 11 barristers mentioned individually in Chambers UK Client Guide 2008 published in November 2007.
Legal 500
9 Gough Square’s ranking in Legal 500’s Client Guide to the legal profession has increased to 17 barrister listings in Personal Injury, Police Law, Health and Safety and in a new ranking for its Fraud practice.
Testimonials about our barristers
We encourage clients to describe how our barristers have helped them. Please send us your testimonial here.
Training and Seminars
We are an accredited provider of CPD training for The Law Society (now the Solicitors Regulation Authority) and were the first Chambers to become an external training provider for APIL.
Fees depend upon work complexity, the seniority of the selected barrister and their availability. It is our policy to charge reasonable fees. Our clerks are pleased to discuss fees in advance and to provide an estimate of the likely costs before accepting instructions.
Chambers accepts cases which are privately funded, insurance-backed, legally aided and, where appropriate, using Conditional Fees.
Occasionally things may not go as well as you expect. Both our barristers and staff aim to establish and maintain the highest professional standards and avoid complaint or dissatisfaction. We recognise, however, that these may arise and we adopt a policy that ensures they are dealt with promptly, courteously, efficiently and sensitively. Complaints about our services may be addressed to the barrister, or person to whom it relates, in the first instance.
Alternatively, if you have a problem or complaint about our service, please contact our Chief Executive or Head of Chambers. It will be resolved confidentially in accordance with our complaints procedures.
A copy of Chambers' Complaints Resolution Procedure is available to our professional and lay clients upon request in writing.
You may also contact the Legal Services Commission or the Bar Standards Board to make a complaint.
Applying to join Chambers? Complete our Equality and Diversity Questionnaire here.
Chambers recruits staff, pupils and new tenants on the basis of ability and welcomes candidates irrespective of sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, age or religion. We are pro-active in the fields of Equality and Diversity. Four members of chambers are members of the Bar Council Equality and Diversity Committee, including one as Vice-Chair. We contributed to the Bar Council Equality and Diversity Code, and our training models have been adopted for training by the Bar.
Our procedures reflect the Equality and Diversity Code for the Bar we monitor our intake for disability, ethnicity and gender. We train our barristers and staff in proper procedures to ensure equality and diversity. We actively encourage applications from practitioners who have previous experience in other fields, especially fields related to our work areas such as forensic accountancy or medical professionals.
Our diversity mix
|
Male |
Female |
BME |
|
|
Under 10 years call |
13 |
10 |
2 |
|
% of all under 10 years |
57% |
43% |
9% |
|
Over 10 years call |
32 |
9 |
7 |
|
% of all over 10 years |
78% |
22% |
17% |
|
Chambers overall |
45 |
19 |
8 |
|
% of Chambers overall |
70% |
30% |
13% |
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This website is produced by 9 Gough Square, a set of barristers' Chambers. Our barristers are self-employed individuals. Members of Chambers, as individual lawyers, may only give advice to a particular person on a specific matter or case if instructed to do so by one of the following: a solicitor, a qualified foreign lawyer or a recognised professional body approved by the Bar Council for the purpose of direct professional access work, or a BarDIRECT client. Nothing on this website should be taken as legal advice. If you are looking for legal advice then please contact the clerks at 9 Gough Square.
The copyright in all material on these pages is vested in the members of Chambers at 9 Gough Square. You may not copy any of these pages or do any other act in relation to any of these pages which is prohibited by copyright, other than the following:
You may print any of these pages or download any of them to a local hard disk for your personal use only. In material issued to third parties, you may quote from our pages so long as you give due accreditation. You may provide a link to this web site on any other web site, but apart from this you may not reproduce or store any part of these pages on any other web site without our prior consent.