Barrister Profile

As a national rowing champion focused on winning, Joanna Toch is as tenacious in the courtroom as she is with an oar in her hands. She is also supremely well organised – she has had to be, combining her sporting and legal careers with raising two children.

Joanna always wanted to be a barrister after watching Crown Court, a much-loved TV soap in the 1970s which played out a court case over three episodes each week. She also always wanted to excel at sport. Coming from a sporting family (her father was a national boxing champion), Joanna took up rowing at the age of 16 having previously turned her hand to almost any sport that was going.

She rowed for Great Britain in the 1979 junior World Rowing championships before becoming the youngest member of the Great Britain team in the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, all while taking her ‘A’ levels.

Joanna studied for her law degree at King’s College, London, taking a year out to compete in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. After graduating, she worked for London University as editor of the university newspaper, London Student, at that time the largest student newspaper in the country.

While at the Commonwealth Games in 1986, Joanna hit the headlines as “The Girl who Gave Thatcher a Rocket” when she quizzed the then prime minister on her attitudes to sporting boycotts. 

In 1988, Joanna undertook pupillage at a criminal set, 3 Temple Gardens.  She left the following year to teach barristers at the Inns of Court School of Law. This allowed her greater training time for the 1990 World Championships, where she was placed 4^th.

In 1992 Joanna returned to practice, this time doing a mix of civil and criminal work. Four years later, she joined Dr Johnson's Buildings, where she focused on family work. 

In 2003, Joanna went to work in a solicitors’ office, joining the firm of Haider Kennedy, where she learnt about establishing and running a practice. In 2007 Joanna joined Brachers, a firm of solicitors in Maidstone and the largest firm in Kent, where she specialised in divorce, ancillary relief, cohabitation disputes, children's residence and contact cases.

In October 2009 she resumed her practice at the Bar, moving to Lamb Building, continuing to specialise in all aspects of family work with a particular interest in the financial aspects of divorce, cohabitation property and child disputes, domestic violence and children matters.

In 2015 she moved to Church Court Chambers, her current set, where she now leads the family team.

Joanna has represented clients in some well known cases, including in a landmark case where the Court of Appeal overruled the decision of the High Court because it said the court at first instance had not allowed Joanna to put the mother's case owing to numerous interventions by the judge. This case set a precedent for when a higher court will intervene to change the factual decisions of a lower court in a family case.

All of which experience has made Joanna ideally equipped to take on direct access work and why she signed up early to myBarrister, the leading online direct access platform, which has provided her with a steady stream of instructions. “I have acquired a range of skills and experience that means I am very comfortable with public access – dealing directly with clients from the outset, understanding the business side of running a practice, managing cases efficiently and, above all, really understanding in my area of practice how to engage with clients sensitively but realistically.”

Joanna has recently started up, with two others, an initiative to help guide those in need of direction when faced with family law problems, particularly those facing divorce. This is familylawcafé.co.uk, an online meeting place “to provide an ethical, strategic and cost-effective way through the potential minefield of family law”, as the official blurb puts it.

For Joanna, the key is helping clients with clear strategy and then supporting them to put that strategy into practice. “Many people facing divorce or a family law issue don’t know where to start, and are often bewildered,” she explains. “We felt that the idea of a notional café, where there could come and, in a reassuring way, be told how to reach the light at the end of the tunnel would be helpful. We want an end to the anxiety, waiting, confusion and distress that is often associated with family law problems.”

Once the “expeditor” and client have agreed a strategy, the Family Law Café can also put them in touch with the appropriate experts – including, if required, barristers. In another innovation, all the documents relating to the case are kept online and accessible by those involved on the case. This helps with the efficient management of the process.

Meanwhile, after a gap of 22 years during which she hung up her oars, Joanna took up rowing again – both competing and coaching. In 2015 she won a number of domestic Masters’ events and competed in the 2015 World Masters Rowing Championships.  In 2016 she was part of the Ardingly crew that won the Women's Head of the River Race and were Masters’ E world champions, which they repeated the following year.

That is why at weekends and as often as she can, Joanna is to be found on the water or in the gym. “Sport is good for the body and soul, as well as your mind,” concludes Joanna. “I love doing hard training and hard races to push myself - as well as walking the dog, which is not quite as strenuous.”

If you need family law advice, contact:

Joanna Toch - Family & Relationships Direct Access Barrister @

Professor Mark Watson-Gandy is one of the longest-serving subscribers to myBarrister (“the Rolls-Royce of the direct access websites” is how he kindly describes us).  Barrister, author, lecturer, parent, Mark has plenty on his plate, all of which he relishes.

Mark Watson-Gandy had not really intended to take on direct access work. Already well established as a successful barrister (he was called to the Bar in 1990) and with the additional professional qualification as an accountant, he had plenty of work. However, lured by the offer of a free bottle of champagne to pose for a photo shoot being arranged by the Financial Times, which needed some stock photos of barristers, he found that direct access was an unexpected saviour.

Mark takes up the story: “Some years later, the FT ran a story about the threat posed by direct access to the traditional solicitor-barrister relationships, and, unbeknown to me, the paper wheeled out one of their stock photos of me to illustrate the story.  The first thing I knew of this was that one of my regular a firm of solicitors was on the phone spitting feathers and saying, “If I didn’t want work from solicitors, I could have said so!”  With my solicitor wholly unconvinced by my protestations of innocence, I thought I’d better be hung for a sheep as a goat and find out a bit more about direct access.”

That was quite a few years ago. Solicitors’ attitude to direct access have changed. Mark explains, “A fair number of the enquiries I get from myBarrister are from solicitors. Ironically, many firms have worked out that direct access, in fact, just opens the door to more flexible alternative ways of structuring the solicitor-barrister-client triangle”

These days, Mark is a member of Three Stone chambers, a set that was created out of the merger of two specialist chancery/commercial barristers’ chambers, Thirteen Old Square Chambers (Mark’s previous set) and 3 Stone Buildings. He has developing a thriving commercial practice, with a particular focus on insolvency.

Mark has been instructed in many interesting and high-profile cases. For example, he represented Craig Whyte in the case involving the Glasgow Rangers football club where Craig Whyte was sued in a £27 million claim involving the financing of his acquisition of the club. He has acted for, among others, the Nigerian Ports Authority, Silvio Berlusconi and the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board and drafted for the Dubai International Financial Centre their legislation on auditors. Most recently, Mark was instructed in a US$1.5 billion claim arising out of the Stanford International Bank liquidation in Antigua.

Mark also works pro bono for causes in which he believes, including in the parliamentary inquiry into the Gurkha veterans’ welfare, on the lobby for a “Samaritan defence” for St John Ambulance and for the Catholic church (for which Mark was made a Papal knight).

Having obtained his direct access qualification soon after barristers were permitted to work directly for members of the public, Mark has also enjoyed this aspect of the practice. Indeed, he feels there are significant benefits for direct access, notably on being in charge of fees. “With direct access, you control your fees and when they are paid.  In the past, I often carried a lot of bad debt when being instructed by solicitors. Certain firms were notoriously bad when it came to paying counsel.

“This factor is felt more sharply now: barristers are now taxed on what we bill, not on what we receive, so that makes it all the more important that barristers stay on top of their cash flow. Get it wrong and a barrister could easily find himself insolvent.”

Insolvency is an area close to Mark’s heart. New editions of Mark’s two books on insolvency, Corporate Insolvency Practice and Personal Insolvency Practice, are shortly to be brought out by Wildys. “They are how to do it guides for insolvency litigation - guiding the reader through the special and quirky legal and procedural steps that apply,” Mark explains. “I thought it was important to have in one place, the legal extracts, the procedure and sample precedents you’d need to walk through the most common insolvency applications”

Mark also teaches, as visiting professor at the University of Westminster (since 1999), where he started the LLM course in corporate finance law, and at Cass Business School at City University.

It is not only university students whom Mark feels can benefit from learning about finance. In 2015, he set up KidsMBA to help 12- to 15-year-olds receive basic business education. Mark explains his thinking: “As an insolvency lawyer, you see so many businesses fail because of the fundamental mistakes made by their founders. It struck me that there is no training in schools to equip pre-school leavers with the basic business knowledge they need for self-employment or to start their own enterprise. I drafted a course and then brought in academics, entrepreneurs, lawyers, accountants and education psychologists to make sure that it fitted the bill.”

British schoolchildren are not the only ones benefiting from the education. KidsMBA is now being rolled out in several countries, each course being adapted for local conditions.

Mark can be contacted via myBarrister here.

Barrister Nigel Brockley has come to the Bar via involvement in a family business, the restaurant trade and cold calling, as well as the acting profession, and is quite at home in the world of direct access. “I like to win,” he says.

The reintroduction of public access to barristers during the Blair administration after more than a century where barristers could only accept instructions from solicitors heralded a major shake-up of the profession. It was as much a cultural change as a professional challenge – barristers found themselves dealing directly with clients at the outset of cases, scoping out plans of action and, for some, the ultimate challenge of negotiating their own fees. But for Nigel Brockley, as someone who had turned his hand to a number of different activities before becoming a barrister – including extended periods in sales – this was water off a duck’s back.  In many ways, his varied career to that point equipped him perfectly for the brave new world of direct access.

After leaving school, where he studied economics, Nigel joined his family property company which had an investment in a large commercial premises in Hoxton (before the area became fashionable) and a hotel near Tenby, in Wales. Always keen to try out different things, Nigel responded to an advertisement to become the manager of a restaurant in Central London; this was Tiddy Dols (which was quite famous in its day) and Nigel was appointed as the manager at the tender age of 20.

With that experience under his belt, Nigel then did a succession of sales jobs. Good with words, persuasive and keen to win (which, of course, are perfect attributes for a would-be barrister as well as a keen rugby player), Nigel has sold anything and everything, from timeshare, computer equipment and water filters to, yes, double glazing. It didn’t faze him that most people said no, because there were always enough people who said yes.

But with a mortgage to pay (he and his brother co-owned a flat), he felt he needed to put himself in a position to earn more regularly. Ignoring the advice of his grandfather who told him not to be a lawyer, Nigel set his sights on becoming a barrister. He borrowed £15,000 from HSBC (the only bank prepared to lend to him) to help pay for a conversion course, and went to Bar School in 1991.

Nigel secured his first six months pupillage at 2 Harcourt Buildings, where he learnt the ropes in a number of practice areas, including personal injury, construction, crime and contractual disputes. For his second six months, he was pupilled to Brian Hurst, then standing counsel for the Nationwide Building Society, adding property, banking and insurance law to his range of specialisms. He became involved in a long-running mortgage fraud case under what is a called a “noting brief” – which is paid work taking notes in a long trial. 

At the same time, Nigel took the opportunity to develop his advocacy skills– as well as satisfying his desire to help others who were not in a position to pay for lawyers – by offering to represent clients through the Free Representation Unit (FRU).  That gave him a lot of experience in employment cases.  Nigel continues to offer his services on a pro bono basis, as part of the Bar Pro Bono Unit.

Nigel was called to the Bar in 1992. After the completion of his training, Nigel was intrigued enough to approach a virtual chambers, Queen’s Bench Chambers.  Here, he continued to develop his practice focusing on employment, mortgage disputes, personal injury and general civil litigation.

As a junior, it was hard to make ends meet, so Nigel continued to find other sources of revenue, including doing some door-to-door market research.  The chambers was, however, successful and Nigel’s practice grew, undertaking work as a junior with his (then) Head of Chambers, Ian McCulloch, on chancery and commercial cases which were complicated beyond his year of call (the period of time for which he had been a barrister). Nigel’s daily diet of work was varied and a goodly proportion of his clients benefitted from public funding.

However, by 1999, Nigel had “still not got to the place where I wanted to be” and he contemplated a change of career. That involved enrolling on a drama course at the London Centre for Theatre Studies to train to become an actor. He then continued his studies at the City Lit, and secured some acting parts in fringe theatre. But, whilst the smell of the grease paint was an alluring distraction, Nigel recognised that he was more likely to achieve success as a barrister than as an actor.

He saw that No 5 Chambers was advertising as setting up in London, so he applied and was accepted. “That seemed like a good idea to revitalise my career,” he says. It also coincided with marriage, a move to Herefordshire and, subsequently, the arrival of three children. Today, Nigel’s practice is wide-ranging, entirely on the civil side and includes employment, property, regulatory work, insolvency, general company and commercial work.

The introduction of direct access in 2004 suited Nigel well, and he was one of the first barristers to become public access-qualified. The direct contact with clients, which public access offers, enables Nigel to work with a client to devise a litigation strategy which meets a client’s objectives in both a timely and affordable way – it is not charity but it does reflect a recognition that not everyone can afford to instruct a big City firm of solicitors. Nigel notes that public access work can at the same time be both tricky and rewarding, as he explains: “You are wearing two hats: there is an advisory and facilitative role which is inseparable from the quasi-pastoral role associated with the peaks and troughs of the litigation process.”

Reflecting on the path he has taken, Nigel is both pleased and philosophical. At various points there have been significant challenges, as when the state of the family’s business affairs were parlous and Nigel found himself (along with his brother) being saddled with a significant debt to repay. This might have brought his chosen career to a premature end - not for Nigel, he dusted himself off and got on with it.

Nigel’s success in his career is not something he takes lightly; it has taken hard work and a commitment to develop and expand his practice base and he recognises that in his client’s eyes that he is only as good as the last case that he has “won”. Nigel sees his 25 years at the Bar as having been marked by an elusive freedom to act in a client’s very best interests, unencumbered by the business rationale of working within a traditional commercial environment. He acknowledges some great successes (and the odd failure too), but his abiding concern has at all times been to persevere in the face a difficult legal argument.

It is a truism to say that he likes to win. As he says: “I am very resilient in the face of adversity and keep going where others might give up.” A helpful precept, you might think, for this barrister’s career, which has been professionally and personally rewarding in equal measure.

Nigel Brockley - Direct Access Barrister @ 

Ever since she enjoyed winning arguments in the school playground, Sheila Aly has wanted to be a barrister. It wasn’t just for the thrill of countering playground bullies with choice words, she has long had a strong belief in standing up for other people. As Sheila puts it: “Being a barrister offered the chance for me, a woman with the gift of the gab and the ability to defend the needy, to help people who did not know how to speak for themselves.”  She has certainly achieved that aim, as a successful employment and family law barrister with a thriving direct access practice.

There was also another motivation to enter a profession that involved speaking in public – as a method of overcoming the fact that, as youngster, Sheila was painfully shy.  In fact, she has developed a love of performing that extends to singing, acting and stand-up comedy.

After studying law at the Queen Mary University of London, Sheila secured pupillage at Littleton Chambers, where her pupil master was Michael Duggan (now Michael Duggan QC), who drilled her in the need for excellence and “helped make me a good practitioner”.

She was called to the Bar in 2002, then obtained a tenancy at Phoenix Chambers (which no longer exists) and developed her practice, but a changing economic environment and changes at the Chambers caused her to seek greater security in paid employment. She joined Citation Plc in June 2008 as an in-house barrister dealing with Employment Tribunal claims. 

That suited Sheila for three years, but she missed the independence of freelance work and returned to the Bar in 2011, joining Warwick House Chambers. She broadened her practice to include family law, partly encouraged by the fact that she had by then trained to be a coach and mediator.

As someone who has always jumped at opportunities that presented themselves, Sheila was also quick off the mark when direct access was introduced. Becoming direct access-qualified soon after she passed the three-year post-qualification period, she has since built up a healthy direct access practice.

Direct access, with the need to deal directly with clients, fits well with her overall philosophy, as Sheila explains. “I like dealing with people not just in a professional capacity, but in all aspects of my life. That made the transition to dealing directly with clients, as well as having clerks, pretty seamless for me.”

So, what makes for a good direct access barrister? “Taking the time, really taking the time to listen to clients’ concerns and issues,” she continues. “I am a good listener, and have developed a set of skills to help steer clients in the right direction which, in turn, helps identify the key problems on which they need my assistance. On top of that, you have to very responsive to leads that come your way; in this day of instant communications, people expect quick answers.  But that does not mean you have to be at their beck and call – direct access also involves good management of expectations.”

Life outside the law

Being a barrister is just one of many activities in Sheila’s life. She has broadcast on hospital, local and commercial radio stations, sung with a jazz band (her idols being Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin), done stand-up comedy and now runs a monthly gathering called Inspire’d (the apostrophe helps with Google searches) in which people can talk for 10 minutes on any subject they choose “to share their wisdom”.  Sheila says: “It is an antidote to small talk, where people talk about life’s big questions, sharing stories and emotions and connecting people.” She also acts as a mentor and coach and has written motivational books.

 Contact Sheila Aly at https://www.mybarrister.co.uk/content/sheila-aly

“I think I may be one of the youngest people to have been called to the Bar, six months after my 21st birthday.”  So says Christopher Ferguson, some 37 years later, as he reflects on his career as a barrister, now exclusively practising family law.

Born and brought up in Dorset, Christopher went to Law School in 1975 at the age of 17. While looking for pupillage, he worked as an executive officer at the Court of Protection. As someone who always enjoyed writing, he entered the Ede & Ravenscroft legal writing competition and, to his great delight, won.  The prize was his full barrister’s robes and wig (no small expense for an impecunious student).

He secured pupillage first with Edward Southwell in Farrar’s Building in 1980, and then with Robert Rhodes (also now a myBarrister barrister). Both were very helpful pupil masters (as they were then called) providing a wide variety of knowledge and experience, from advocacy and drafting documents, to involving him with the morning school run, delivering Christmas gifts by motorcycle and changing one of their tyres in the Inner Temple car park. All of this has proved useful in subsequent years. Pupillage is perhaps rather different nowadays.

Christopher knew that an opening for a tenancy was unlikely in his London chambers, so looked further afield towards the West Country where he grew up. He secured a third six-month pupillage in a small common law set in Bristol, Assize Court Chambers, where he then secured a tenancy and concentrated on crime and family law, in which he had specialised at law school. He found that these were areas of practice that he preferred, as he “wanted to deal with people and court rooms, rather than documents and libraries.”  

Christopher’s greatest priority was his family - he met his wife when she was studying history at London University. Raising a family (his children were born in 1985, 1987 and 1989), he found time to play squash, rugby and cricket, while trying to build his practice. He was a founder member of Unity Street Chambers in Bristol in 2001.

He moved to Sovereign Chambers in Leeds for both professional and family reasons in 2008. There he practised exclusively in family law. Sovereign then merged with N0.6 in 2015 to create Park Square Barristers, where Christopher currently practises with over 100 colleagues.

Dealing with direct access clients

With his propensity for dealing with people, Christopher has been well suited to direct access work. “I have found three particular attributes to be especially useful in family law,” Christopher says: “first, a strong stomach, to deal with what can often be difficult and unsavoury situations; secondly - the patience of a saint, as it is important to listen to people trying to explain their worries and problems; and, thirdly, you need a sense of humour, to offset the tension that frequently exists, to maintain your sanity and sometimes even to help put a client at ease (unless applied inappropriately...). I may not always get it right, but I do believe that an element of ‘bedside manner’ has helped me to win the trust of many clients and so to fight their cause more effectively."

“It is, however, still important to be dispassionate – I have to be objective to give clients the best professional advice and guidance.”

Christopher is also honest about looking after their best interests when it comes to fees. “I try to help my clients save money. No one really likes having to pay for legal advice. I often tell clients, they should be spending their money on their children rather than on mine. Equally, I am not a charity and have a living to make, so I invoice at a realistic rate, but tend to charge for hearings, rather than for conferences and drafting assistance generally.”

Outside of work, Christopher continues to be interested in music, theatre and sport. He was chair of a Disciplinary Tribunal of the Modern Pentathlon Association of Great Britain and officiated at Greenwich Park in the Modern Pentathlon at the 2012 Olympics.

Christopher Ferguson - Family Law Barrister

“Business crime cases are fascinating,” says Robert Rhodes QC, “because that is where the worlds of commerce and crime meet. For a lawyer, I don’t think there is a more interesting area in which to practise.” Robert should know, as an expert in business crime and fraud who has been instructed in some of the most celebrated – and certainly high-profile – cases over three decades.  En route, he has built up wide-ranging expertise which he offers for the benefit of direct access clients as well as to instructing solicitors.  

Robert had originally intended to specialise in tax work but was advised to acquire more general experience. Indeed he did, doing a mixture of civil and criminal work, and found that he particularly enjoyed the advocacy aspects of the profession. 

Early on in his career, Robert was instructed on some fraud cases and found that this was much to his liking – especially as it harnessed his advocacy skills. He enjoyed the combination of intellectual challenge and using his powers of persuasion. “It was particularly satisfying being able to outthink your opponent,” Robert says, “or, to use an apt metaphor, to pick his pocket before he realised what had happened”.  (In fact, fencing may be a better metaphor: Robert was an international fencer in the 1960s). 

His first break came in 1976 when he was junior counsel prosecuting the directors of the Israel-British Bank in a huge fraud case. As Standing Counsel to the Inland Revenue (now Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) between 1979 and 1989, Robert was also instructed on many tax prosecutions.

But he was also involved in some notable defence cases, none more so than his representation of Guy von Cramer, an associate of Peter Clowes, which resulted in an acquittal for his client. The case arose out of the insolvency of Barlow Clowes, and resulted in Peter Clowes being convicted for fraud and theft and sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years. Another notable feature of the von Cramer case was that Robert made a closing speech that lasted six and a half days.  

What made it all the more interesting for Robert was that throughout his career he has acted for both prosecution and defence, which gave him an all-round perspective of this area of law. He took on cases involving all aspects of business crime, including civil and criminal fraud, tax investigations, bribery and money laundering. He took Silk in 1989. 

As a result of his reputation for business crime cases, Robert broadened his practice to include regulatory work and, in turn, being invited to head panels hearing disciplinary cases involving bankers and accountants. 

As someone sitting in judgment rather than representing one of the parties, Robert became increasingly convinced that most issues could be resolved more quickly.  In hearings, he insisted that both sides focus on the real points at issue, thus condensing proceedings. 

Robert’s reputation extended further still. He took on cases in other jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and was also asked to lecture on business crime and company law to audiences in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, among other places. Robert was the first English Silk to be instructed in a capital drugs appeal in Singapore. In fact, that rekindled an interest Robert had long had in Asia (he studied Oriental Studies at Oxford). He also has rights of audience in the Dubai International Financial Centre (which has its own jurisdiction within Dubai).

Robert also qualified as a mediator and an arbitrator (he is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators). He is on several Far Eastern mediation and arbitration panels. In his capacity as mediator, he always tells the parties to the mediation that mediation not about right and wrong, it is about finding a resolution to the dispute. “’What is the best deal you can live with?’, I tell them,” Robert explains. “‘If you can’t live with the deal, then litigate’.” 

All of which begs the question: with such a flourishing practice, why does Robert take on direct access work? Robert gives several reasons in response: “Direct access is another string to my bow. I am interested to help people who otherwise might not have access to legal advice. And, frankly, the more work you do, the more interesting life is.”

He only accepts direct access instructions on two conditions: the first is that it must of a certain size, and the second is that the case does not require a solicitor. Not that he invariably accepts cases when these two conditions are satisfied.  If he feels that the case does not merit hiring a silk, he will always recommend to the client that they instruct a junior barrister. “I always see if there are ways to help reduce the clients’ costs – seeking legal advice can be very expensive, after all.”

He has established a good way of working with direct access clients that has served him well:

First, he always responds quickly to any leads, acknowledging receipt and indicating when he will be able to get back with a time of meeting. 

Second, he usually offers a free first meeting, to discuss in general terms the nature of the problem, but not offering legal advice.

Third, he is direct and to the point in his advice – so that the client knows exactly where they stand. That does not always make him popular, he says. “Sometimes clients get upset when I give them advice they are not expecting, but there is absolutely no point in telling them what they want to hear rather than what you think.  That is not why they have sought your advice.”  

Finally, once instructed, he devotes his full attention to the client, whatever the case.  “I roll up my sleeves and get on with it.”

He admits that direct access has its frustrations and that potential clients can be unreliable, saying they will instruct and then not doing so, but Robert is philosophical. “You also have to be sanguine about the fact that you offer your help to a direct access client and then you may not hear from him again. A lot of direct access clients let you down, but that’s life!  That is more than offset by the number of good instructions you receive.” 

Robert Rhodes QC - Direct Access Mediation Barrister