Tiffany Scott is a barrister at Wilberforce Chambers, a set leading the way in commercial chancery work. She has a chancery-based practice spanning property, pensions, trusts and professional negligence. Tiffany says: “When I was at sixth form college, I was interested in the law and I went on a work experience placement for a week in a chambers in Guildford. It was a general common law set with a broad spread of work in different areas, like family, crime and personal injury. It put me off slightly because I didn’t feel I was suited to that kind of work and I didn’t know that there were specialist chancery or commercial chambers, or what chancery work involved. I knew about the conversion course which meant I didn’t have to study law at university, so I went off and did a classics degree at Oxford instead.”

After finishing her degree, Tiffany did the CPE. She says: “I went to the university law fair in my final year and learned about chancery work, and I lined up several mini-pupillages then and during the CPE. I did investigate being a solicitor, but I think it was clear from my CV that I was leaning towards becoming a barrister, so I found it quite difficult to get work placements at good City firms.” Tiffany went on to study the BVC at the Inns of Court School of Law.

When you’re a student, professional negligence is usually a practice area buried within others. Tiffany says: “It isn’t something that is really addressed as a subject area on either the CPE or the BVC – only in the peripheral sense when you study tort and contract. On the BVC, you start doing things like drafting pleadings, and it begins to fall into place a little bit. It’s not something that you’re taught as such.”

Tiffany won a pupillage at Wilberforce Chambers. She describes her experience: “As a pupil, I saw a lot of property work. Professional negligence work goes along with each practice area, so it’s in property work too. We structure our pupillages so that you sit with four pupil supervisors during your 12 months. I sat with barristers who did property and trusts, and someone who did more commercial aspects. I came across a little bit of professional negligence then.”

Although Tiffany has chosen to keep her practice as broad as it was during pupillage, the level of work she sees now is very different. She notes: “In your early years of practice in the professional negligence sphere, you’re more likely to get instructions from the claimant – that is, the person who’s been on the receiving end of the negligence. The more experienced you get, the more you develop a relationship with the insurance companies representing the professionals and then you get more instructions from the defendants. The bigger the case, the more there is at stake and the more tactical decisions you’ve got to take.”

Those decisions prove ever more complex: “Professional negligence litigation is largely about tactics. The law is relatively straightforward, but each case turns on its own facts, and there are many strategic and commercial decisions to take at each stage. That’s why in many ways it’s easier to do this kind of work when you’re more senior and you’ve got more of a handle on tactics and practicalities; when you first start out, you’re more concerned with what the law is and having to stay on top of that.”

And Tiffany knows how hard one has to try to stay afloat. “At the moment,” she explains, “I’m extremely busy. It’s sometimes difficult to balance the court work with the paperwork. I’ve got a big fraud case on and I’ve got nine sets of papers waiting for me to deal with them. I’ve got another seven or eight cases bumbling along that pop up now and then. It’s always either too much or too little!”

An average day includes several telephone conversations on several different cases. Tiffany describes a day in chambers as “trying to juggle all the cases I’ve got in the air”. A professional negligence barrister will have a lot of pre-action hoops to jump through. Tiffany comments: “There’s a good deal of preparatory work, such as drafting letters, before you even get to the proceedings.” On other days, you’ll be “attending court on an interim or substantive hearing”.

Tiffany managed to bag work on a particularly groundbreaking case when she was a junior barrister. “It was a commercial case with many different aspects, including fraud and professional negligence,” she remembers. “It went to the Court of Appeal on two occasions and it led to a clarification of the law. It was high profile and intellectually challenging work. The issues were really difficult. It was a very good experience for me and something I’m pleased to have on my CV.”

As one of the members of her set’s pupillage committee, Tiffany sees the applications and the interviewees. She’s developed a keen eye for what her chambers is looking for in a potential pupil. She says: “You’ve got to make sure you sell yourself on paper initially. I read so many applications where people don’t sell themselves. Many people have good degrees these days so you’ve really got to make sure you bring out all your achievements or you can’t get any credit for them. And be well-prepared for the interview. Research the kind of law that the chambers does. You can’t just make blanket applications. You’ve got to show interest in the work that they do otherwise they won’t be interested in you.”

As for professional negligence work, you need a canny grasp of tactics and procedure. Tiffany says: “You’ve got to have a good understanding of how the insurance companies operate because they’re always standing behind the professional. Whether you’re acting for the professional or the claimant, you need to know what the insurance company will be interested in and how they’re going to play the case.”

Added to that, Tiffany emphasises the need for good commercial sense: “Behind every case that you do, there is a professional negligence case waiting to happen.”