Sir, There is much discussion about possible formal appraisal of the performance of advocates in the courts (“On trial: judging the way barristers perform in court”, Law, June 30). As a recorder who had to give verbal judgments “off the cuff” lasting up to an hour or more at the end of family cases, I cried out for the benefit of appraisal.
Without it, I was left in uncertainty, sometimes leading to lack of confidence. The (hopefully rare) exceptions were when judgments were appealed and one’s grammatical and fumbling non sequiturs were exposed to public opprobrium in the transcripts taken from court recordings.
From these it was possible to learn some valuable lessons, including the virtue of short, succinct sentences and the avoidance of subjunctives.
One could sometimes pick up a clue to performance from a chance remark by a probation officer or court official, but never throughout more than 700 hours of sittings in courts all over the Western Circuit was I ever privileged to receive one actual word of formal advice or criticism.
For all the training by the Judicial Studies Board and the valuable lessons in becoming a judge, this crucial lack of critical appraisal of one’s day-to-day performance left a yawning gap.
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John Greenwood
Assistant and Full Recorder, 1988-2002
Chippenham, Wilts