Bar Council Guidance clarifies a potential conflict scenario

The Bar Council has issued an Information Note on the issue of an advocate being instructed in an arbitration where the arbitrator is a member of the same barrister’s chambers.  Such a situation arises regularly in international commercial litigation and has been confirmed as being unobjectionable by Rix J in Laker Airways v FLS Aerospace [1999] EWHC B3 (Comm), [2000] 1 WLR 113.  It is sometimes difficult for the lay parties to the arbitration to understand that this poses no conflict.  This tends to be the more so where they come from a jurisdiction outside England & Wales which is unused to the concept of an independent bar and barristers’ chambers arrangements.  Nevertheless, the Bar Council explains that there is no difficulty with the instruction of counsel from the same chambers as the arbitrator, so long as certain careful procedures are put in place within the chambers.  These include clear Chinese walls between the clerks acting on behalf of the arbitrator and the advocate.  The full discussion which the Note contains is instructive, and its conclusion that such dual or multiple representation from within a single set of Chambers is not in principle objectionable, offer welcome clarification.