Edward Lamb KC interviewed by The Bar Council in pro bono week

Edward Lamb KC spoke to The Bar Council of England and Wales about how his pro bono week helped him in his application to take Silk:

Edward Lamb KC’s practice includes the most important private children cases with complex cross jurisdictional issues, inflicted non-accidental catastrophic injury on children, and clinical negligence/PI cases involving life-long disability (both children and adults), lack of capacity and birth injury. His expertise in these areas frequently places Edward in important and complex cases that involve multi-jurisdictional issues that span these specialisms. Edward is listed in the legal directories across all of his specialist areas: Family (children); Personal Injury; Clinical Negligence and the Court of Protection.

I’d never have thought my pro bono work would have made the slightest difference to my silk application. But then again, I had never thought particularly hard about making an application for silk; until of course I thought really hard about making an application!

When you make a decision to apply for silk, you are met with a terrifyingly enormous (and empty) application form. 12 cases of utmost and wider importance they say. How on earth was that going to be possible? As I set about trying to identify what cases were worthy of inclusion, it dawned on me that a number of those cases were through my pro bono work.

In the silks application you have to hit the competencies. It’s all about the competencies. I realised I was able to use a number of different scenarios in my pro bono work to kill a number of competency birds with one stone. For example, my work in establishing a specialist stream for Court of Protection cases at Advocate involving applicants who were neurodivergent or had mental health problems, resulted in being able to talk about different teamwork competencies. Moreover it was a topic I found my interviewers were interested in and perhaps allowed them to know a bit more about me in a context distinct from a particular legal case.

More broadly than that however, was the opportunity, through pro bono work, to undertake cases outside my specialisms. Another pro bono case I relied on was particularly helpful in that it allowed me to show the panel that I was able to pick up and assimilate new areas of law. On reflection, I felt this was an important part of my interview and was a topic that was discussed at some length during it. If you are lucky enough to help a litigant in need pro bono and that case is reported, it garners a feeling of goodwill with the judge hearing your case; again helpful when you are scrambling around to find judges who want to say nice things about you!

I cannot speak highly enough of how much pro bono work has given me professionally. I have met and worked with not only the devoted team at Advocate, but also solicitors at leading firms who are willing to give their time for free. Along the way I have also met and acted for an extraordinarily diverse range of clients; which has been very rewarding. This has given me great personal satisfaction and left me in no doubt that my pro bono work was instrumental in my successful silk application. In times where access to justice is imbalanced and patchy for those that need it most, I have enjoyed doing my bit thus far. It has helped me in my career and provided some wonderful memories. I am always happy to discuss pro bono work with anyone who wants to; just send me an email and I would be happy to talk things through.

This blog post was first published by The Bar Council of England and Wales.