Health and safety law

A career as a health and safety law barrister may involve working on very high profile cases.

‘Company pleads guilty to the death of nine workers in worst industrial accident in Scottish history’; ‘Woman awarded £3m damages for sex mad husband’. In one shape or form, cases relating to health and safety dominate the headlines on a weekly basis.

A health and safety law barrister's work

Health and safety law covers a wide variety of practice areas at the Bar. These range from criminal law cases relating to industrial accidents to personal injury law cases heard in the High Court. Most cases involve a tortuous claim or a claim for breach of statutory duty.

Personal injury cases are the staple diet of the health and safety bar. Unlike solicitors, a typical barrister will act for both claimants and defendants in personal injury claims. On one day you can be acting for an insurance company defending their client in a claim; on another you may be seeking hundreds of thousands of pounds against the same insurer. Most personal injury claims arise out of road traffic accidents (RTAs). Anyone at the junior bar spends so many hours cross-examining about whether the traffic lights were red or green that they invariably end up dreaming about traffic lights.

When you start out in this area, the small claims court is where you cut your teeth and get your experience of cross-examining witnesses. Your life will resemble a scene from Waiting for Godot as you count the hours sitting outside the small claims court in areas of the country that you have never heard of before, waiting for the district judge to get through his or her list of cases and to get to your small claims trial. Patience is an absolute necessity.

As you get more senior, the cases get more complex and varied. The first time that you get to don your wig and gown in a proper multi-track trial (one worth more than £15,000) is exhilarating. You will progress from RTAs to employer’s liability cases, high value, complex group litigation murder or high profile health and safety prosecutions such as those concerning the Paddington rail crash or the Marchioness disaster on the Thames.

This area has changed considerably since the introduction of the Civil Procedure Rules in 1999. There are fewer trials and more cases settle. Once you graduate from the small claims court, you may have about one trial a month. However, you will still have to put in the hours. Unlike the criminal bar, the intensity of the work tends to be in the preparation for trial. You have to ensure that your evidence is adequately set out in witness statements that are served months before any trial. You have to have conferences with your experts so that when you cross-examine that eminent neuropsychologist you know the particular area in dispute better than he or she does. When you have a trial on the go you have to forget about having a life at the same time. The simple fact is that you work for 16 hours a day, and if you don’t you will be found out in court.

Developments in health and safety law

You will have to become intimately familiar with ‘Ogden tables’, which set out a formula to be applied to the calculation of damages, and with the phrase ‘periodical payments’. You will also have to learn what the ‘six pack’ is (six separate pieces of health and safety legislation enacted in 1992 as a result of European directives). This is a rapidly developing area of law that almost always has an aspect of it in flux or awaiting refinement.

What skills do health and safety law barristers need?

The ability to analyse complex statute law and often impenetrable statutory regulations.
Oral advocacy, including the ability to think quickly on your feet.
Excellent communication skills.
First class analytical abilities.
The ability to produce clear and concise written advices. Practical, creative and sensible advice is demanded by the clients.