2019 Legal Awards

4 SME NEWS / 2019 Legal Awards Chancery Court Tax Chambers Chancery Court Tax Chambers: Best Boutique Tax Chambers 2019 Feb19100 , Drawing on a vast wealth of tax advisory and disputes experience, Chancery Court Tax Chambers (CCTC) is a boutique Barrister’s Chambers providing UK and international tax and wealth structuring advice and assistance. As part of our overview of a selection of the winners of this year’s Legal Awards we explore the secrets behind the practice’s incredible success by interviewing their Head of Chambers, JosephHoward. Joseph, dressed in dark blue suit, is there to meet me the moment the elevator doors open at 5 Chancery Lane, CCTC’s current home. After a firm handshake, he introduces me to his team – Tristan, Soracha, and Bianca – and then he shows me to a pleasantly decorated conference room, set apart from the main office. “This is usually where I first meet my clients” Joseph explains as he closes the heavy oak door. He pours me a coffee and even though he has only said a few words, his gently reassuring manner is already in evidence, putting me immediately at ease as I settle into my seat. I start by congratulating him on CCTC’s fantastic achievement in winning an SME News Legal Award for 2019. Then I mention their imminent move to larger offices in the newly refurbished 18th Century 12 Gray’s Inn Square (formally the offices of Baron Carlisle of Berriew QC) as well as the launch of CCTC’s pupillage programme. While I’m giving him open licence to have a – quite justifiable – boast about CCTC’s breathtaking year to date, Joseph doesn’t take it. Instead, he asks about me. We end up chatting for ten minutes about my own work, and – when it emerges that we share an interest in architecture – for another five about that too. I soon realise that, while I’m just an interviewer rather than a client, that getting to know who he’s talking to is simply second nature to Joseph. Before I open my notebook, I ask Joseph the simple question of what inspired him to seek to be called to the bar, and to specialise in tax. “It was really an accident” he smiles. “I’m not from a ‘lawyer family’ where my parents encouraged me to become a barrister. Quite the opposite in fact. I started learning the ropes from the bottom up in a family business. It was 1996 and I was in my early twenties, and we needed to get an injunction in relation to a building we were working on. Our solicitor wasn’t able understand the nuances of what we wanted, or to write the injunction we needed in time. So I – perhaps incautiously – brought a book on injunctions from a legal bookshop and had a go at drafting it myself. Then I went to court with it” “That was certainly a bold move” I say. “Wasn’t it obvious to the judge the injunction was the work of a have-a-go amateur?” “Yes” Joseph laughs. “Its language and presentation were certainly not “conventional”. However, it captured more or less what we needed it to. The judge told me that he was incredulous I had drafted it with no training and just a textbook. He asked me if I’d considered going into law- which at that point I hadn’t!” “So, this was what inspired you?” “Yes. And a realisation that dawned on me right then. That, working with the law is fundamentally engineering with language. First, you need to be an architect- that is to say, you need a vision of what you want to achieve through a legal construction. Second, you need to be a structural engineer to make sure that the legal structure you build (whether it be a court case, a company restructure or a complex family succession plan) doesn’t collapse. In drafting that injunction I’d managed to design a relatively simple legal “building” that fitted our purpose and built it well enough that it stood firm in court. From that point onwards, I knew I wanted to go into law.” “But that was in property law. What ended up drawing you instead to tax?” “Shorty afterwards, I met an old barrister called John Ross-Martin. He was Chancery barrister from Lincoln’s Inn and was just about to retire... I asked him if there was anything that – looking back – he’d have done differently. He told me that he’d have become a tax barrister.” “Why was that?” I ask. “Because that’s where the cutting edge of the law is to be found. Tax is one of the largest expenses of any commercial venture. Get it right and everyone is then happy. Get it wrong and suddenly all your profits are gone, and your deal is deep underwater. Government tax policy changes frequently (often twice a year) and this is reflected in the ever growing and changing UK tax code which is the longest and most complex in the in the world: over 20,000 pages, and currently growing by thousands every year.” I follow his gaze to a bookshelf where – amidst numerous imposing tax encyclopaedias (some of which bear his name) I can see the yellow sleeves of the latest edition of Tolley’s