In the best company
Aside from being the only London set to be top-ranked for commercial chancery work, Maitland receives ten separate rankings within the top three bands of Chambers UK. Work spans company law, partnership disputes, banking and finance, fraud and professional negligence. A prominent traditional chancery practice involving charities, real property and probate work continues to thrive. The set's coverage of commercial law in all its guises is comprehensive to say the least; one pupil succinctly defined Maitland’s scope as “not shipping.”
Members have worked on high-profile disputes over the fallout of the Lehman and Madoff collapses and defended a private equity firm against claims brought by Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. They have also advised HMRC in a multibillion-pound Court of Appeal carousel fraud case and represented the trustees in the bankruptcy of Nick Levene – financier and former vice-chair of Leyton Orient – laden with a $200m creditors debt. Other lay clients range from banks and football clubs to pop stars and universities: members acted for UCL over campus occupations during the student fees protests.
An increasing amount of the set's work is international – members were recently involved in a $500m fraud claim brought by Russian steel giant Polyus against a Kazakh business family over a gold mine. Internationalisation is one of the strategic goals of pioneering senior clerking duo Lee Cutler and John Wiggs. “We are encouraging international work by visiting jurisdictions like BVI and Bermuda and by linking members up to specific jurisdictions. We are also promoting chambers as a brand, because that's how our major international and American law firm clients see us. But our real strength – our USP – is that we have strength in so many areas. We can provide one barrister who knows three or four areas of the law.”
Best Maits
Pupils spend their first three months with one supervisor – after that each seat will last two months. To ensure fairness, pupils sit with the same supervisors. Happily for pupils, the set views the lead up to Christmas as a “finding-your-feet time when you can ask stupid questions.” The experience in each 'seat' is contingent on the supervisor’s personal style. “My first supervisor took the view that I should be observing his work,” one pupil told us, while another added: “I went straight into doing drafting in my first seat – on my first day in fact.” One continued: “Throughout pupillage I did a mix of live and non-live work. If my supervisor didn't think the case he was on would be a useful experience to me, he would set me some drafting or research based on an earlier case of his.” Pupils sometimes spend time shadowing other members. “I’m currently observing a trial, so I have been exposed to rules of evidence relating to company cases,” one told us.
Pupils see all sorts of work during the year. It helps that juniors rarely specialise. One supervisor we heard of worked on commercial, contract, fraud and banking cases. “My supervisors have all had very broad practices, and yet none of them really overlapped,” one source told us. After gaining tenancy (fingers crossed), juniors are assigned cases of their own and will be on their feet several times a week. Cases often fall into the traditional chancery ambit – “personal and company insolvencies, landlord-tenant disputes, spats between companies, contentious probate.” Baby juniors split their time “fifty-fifty” between cases like these and being led on commercial chancery cases. “These are major commercial fraud or finance cases with lots of documents to go through, so they need the manpower. They often have an international flavour and are very high-profile – like our Lehman work.”
Trace the Irascible
Although pupils don't spend any time on their feet during pupillage, there are five assessed advocacy exercises. They increase in complexity and “in volume in terms of the amount of paper.” The first is usually a simple trial where pupils act opposite each other – and then have to switch sides and argue the opposite position. Ensuing exercises might include applying for injunctions or complex rights of way cases. “It is a bit scary to a degree,” a baby junior recalled. “But the exercises really train you up so you are ready to go out there.” In at least one of the exercises, pupillage committee head Anthony Trace QC – noted by our Chambers UK colleagues for his “take-no-prisoners” approach – will act as judge. His stance can be “irascible” (his words not ours) but we can attest to the fact he is one of the set's warmest, most enthusiastic and most colourful characters.
“It is our supervisors' reports which carry the most weight in terms of tenancy,” a pupil informed us. “The oral advocacy exercises are also taken into account, but they are mostly just a learning experience.” Supervisors inform the tenancy committee of their conclusions by way of a standardised form. “They mostly assess you on how you develop.” Pupils also receive constant feedback from supervisors throughout the year. No doubt pupils were also comforted by Maitland’s impressive track record for taking on its own pupils. In 2011, both were offered tenancy – in fact, the set hasn't turned down a pupil since 2008.
Pupco to pubco
Maitland is outside the Pupillage Portal scheme – its application form is posted online from mid-January. The application deadline for 2012 is 31 January (a full three months before the Pupillage Portal deadline). So, applicants have only two-and-half to three weeks to complete their applications. The application form asks all the standard questions – Why law? Why the Chancery Bar? Why Maitland? There's also a challenging and dangerously open-ended question. It has been known to go a little something like this: 'Choose a proposition and convince us'. One successful applicant wrote on “why you should go on a National Trust holiday.” The set isn't looking for any specific knowledge, but “writing skills, your thinking processes and your powers of persuasion.” And a bit of originality certainly wouldn’t go amiss.
Around 30 hopefuls are invited to a first-round interview. It starts with “ice-breakers in relation to your CV”, followed by a reasoning question. A pupillage committee source told us: “We might give someone a page-long clause from a contract and ask them to discuss how it might operate in certain situations.” A week later ten to 15 people will be invited back for a second interview, which consists solely of a complex legal problem. This involves 40 minutes' preparation where “the candidate is given a mock instruction setting out the facts of a hypothetical case and will be asked to discuss legal and other issues to which it gives rise.” Although the set assures us the questions can be successfully answered by both law and non-law grads, we note that the questions are quite technical. So, be prepared!
Fitting in to a certain culture or being a specific type of person is not hugely important to Maitland. “There are different personalities. We have some colourful characters here definitely – Anthony Trace has a piano in his room – but others are quieter.” Although its two newest tenants are both Cambridge law grads, Maitland does not judge candidates based on university background and visits law fairs and universities across the country.
Chambers has a daily 4pm teatime. “Usually you will go if your supervisor goes, but sometimes if they are busy you will go without them.” Tea is “a great learning opportunity, especially for juniors. Members have just come back from court and will be talking about their cases.” Outside the chambers' sleek interior and Portland stone façade, 'pubco' organises a weekly Thursday pub outing and there's Friday drinks in the clerks' room. “The junior end of chambers is very cohesive” and some members attend tea and drinks “religiously.”
And finally...
Maitland's strong stable of barristers and its thorough and open approach to pupillage make it very popular with applicants.