Hi, I am Jonanthan Maskew, one of the directors and co-founder of ShenSmith Barristers. One of the aims for 2016 is to engage with businesses and SMEs to allow a wider communication and understanding of how we work.
What is a ‘dual capacity barrister’ ?
Many of our team now have dual capacity to act as litigators and/or barristers, which allows you as a client to come to us for one stop litigation support. The earlier involvement of a barrister with that capacity allows you to have much greater control of cost and of specific cases without the needs to go to solicitors and barristers. So that has real cost-effective and added value for you as a client.
How does ShenSmith Barristers offer dual capacity barrister services?
One of the aims for ShenSmith Barristers is to put together that one stop model. The ShenSmith model is a new model, one of the many that are emerging in the new legal services environment, which allow you, the client much greater control. You are not having to go to solicitors and barristers to repeat the same instructions, it allows you to come to the barrister in the capacity that he has to ensure that that repetitive or duplication of costs is actually at its bare minimum.
We work with businesses and SMEs, entrepreneurs and startups over the last 12 months, and we monitored the process of certain cases. The cost benefit is huge. We know the costs to come to one of our barristers who has that dual capacity is less than 50% of that going to a solicitor. So that is one of the key drivers. We know it adds value, and we know that we are adding real real benefit to the clients.
What is litigation funding?
One of the aims of the ShenSmith Barrister model is also to ensure that clients have the benefit of not only litigation and barrister skills, but also to provide litigation funding where it’s necessary and/or appropriate. What it is allowing clients to do, is to ensure that at an early stage, a barrister gives an opinion; on the basis of that opinion, we can then secure with our preferred partners litigation funding, which allows the funding of the legal aspect of your case moving forward.
So, the whole package is becoming much more widely understood for people, who have got legal disputes to actually think again about how they can address that legal need.
ShenSmith Barristers in calibration with other partners are finally putting together parts of the jigsaw which allow you to do that. It’s a new model – litigation funding will and is becoming much more commonly accepted. And we look forward to working with you in those innovative way to ensure that you, the client has real value.