Advocacy
Birds Solicitors undertakes advocacy on its own cases in courts at every level including the Magistrates’ Court, Crown Court, Coroner’s Court, High Court , Court of Appeal and at prison adjudications.
All solicitors are able to conduct hearings at the Magistrates’ Court and at prison Adjudications and we have a team of experienced advocates who appear in the Magistrates’ Court every day undertaking bail applications, pleas in mitigation, various other hearings and trials. Our prison law team appear daily before judges in prison adjudications and parole hearings.
We provide Duty Solicitor cover at local London courts on a rota basis to ensure that those who arrive at the Magistrates’ Court without representation can be represented by a solicitor if their case fits the Duty Solicitor scheme criteria.
Solicitors who have been granted rights of audience in the higher courts can also appear as advocates in the Crown Court, Coroner’s Court, High Court and Court of Appeal. A solicitor with these rights of audience is known as a Solicitor Advocate or a Higher Courts Advocate (“HCA”). In effect the HCA is the same as a barrister.
The firm has a number of experienced HCAs regularly representing individuals in the higher courts, most specifically in the Crown Court. Our HCAs are instructed independently by other firms of solicitors to act as advocates on Crown Court cases. This is an indication of the recognition of their peers as to the quality of their work in court.
Our advocates have acted as leading advocates on complex cases, junior advocates to Queens Counsel on serious and complex matters and as advocates alone in cases not requiring two advocates to deal with them.
We choose our advocates carefully to ensure that in each case the advocate is appropriate and sufficiently experienced for the specific case. We will instruct barristers (Counsel) where we consider it appropriate to do so. Our advocates work with counsel in cases where the legal aid allows for two advocates and regularly appear co-defending with counsel in Crown Court trials.
Each client has the right to choose an advocate for his case, subject to that advocate being available and able to take the case on. We know that in choosing an advocate from our experienced HCAs, we can provide a level of experience in each case that may not always be available elsewhere and a guarantee of the quality of the advocacy provided to the client.
Any firm wishing to instruct one of advocates for a Crown Court case, should in the first instance contact our office manager (p.klus@birds.eu.com) or the individual advocate directly.
Our HCA team comprises:
Evans Amoah-Nyamekye
Nicholas Goss
Nahid Khaliq
Mark McKeever
Paul Morgan
Philippa Southwell