Page 12 Barristers Feature
Riding the storm
Clients cast adrift by banks... financial institutions seeking lifelines... 2009 will be an interesting year for chambers, reports Lucy Trevelyan

The credit crunch, ­tumbling property prices and the world’s financial ­crisis are taking their toll on the legal market. ­Combine these factors with some radical ­legislative and procedural reforms and one sees a dramatic change in the ­nature of work barristers are being asked to carry out in the fields of financial services, ­banking, property, ­insolvency and trusts. The litigation explosion one ­expects following the collapse of a lengthy boom has yet to materialise, but a slow fuse is burning as clients in all sectors flock to the bar for advice on how to extricate themselves from agreements made in happier times. Jonathan Gaisman QC of 7 King’s Bench Walk, in London, says: ‘Although some advisory work has been generated for the bar by the recent seismic shifts in the financial markets, my impression is that many financial institutions are in a state of stunned immobility, and that it will be some time before the extraordinary events of the past few months translate into the ­predicted “spike” in litigation.’ The present downturn in the ­financial markets can be likened to that of the Lloyd’s LMX spiral of the 1980s, he says, with the underlying reasons for the slumps being the same. These are the failures to manage risk, to understand the composition of the risks assumed, and to understand the scale of exposure to them. ‘The difference is that the ­present spiral is still unwinding, and no-one knows who are going to end up being the dunces,’ says Gaisman. The financial crisis has generated at least one juicy case for Gaisman: he is acting for disgruntled Northern Rock shareholders seeking to

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