William (‘Bill’) Baker KC – Crown Prosecution Service

Appointed to silk in early 2024, Bill Baker is employed by the CPS as a Principal Crown Advocate in the Serious Economic Organised Crime and International Directorate (SEOCID) co-located with the National Crime Agency (NCA) in the North of England. In effect he has been standing counsel to the NCA for the last 14 years. At the end of his existing trial commitments, he will return to the self-employed Bar in Manchester.

Bill’s maternal grandfather was a miner, and both his parents attended Grammar Schools. His mother was a social worker specialising in severe learning disabilities and his father left school at 16 and became an accountant.

Bill studied law and (at his father’s prompting) accountancy at Lancaster University.  He had a common law pupillage in Manchester then chose to specialise in crime as the cases involved important points in peoples’ lives. He spent 19 years at the self-employed Bar prosecuting and defending serious crime including murder, manslaughter, rape, fraud and multi-handed drug cases. In 2010 the then DPP Sir Keir Starmer and then Head of London CPS Alison Saunders recruited Bill to lead in the most difficult organised crime cases that had international and sensitive elements. He was one of a small number of experienced counsel recruited from the Bar at that time to work in house to ensure that problems that had led to large cases collapsing in the past were picked up and resolved by spreading good practice and excellence in casework.

The move to the CPS initially enabled Bill to enjoy a better work life balance with his young family when he was not part heard in a trial or working to a deadline, but over the years the demands of the job became increasingly heavy.

In 2020 Bill became part of a team of four counsel in the largest ever NCA prosecution of a large number of defendants across a number of trials (which was ongoing at the time of the interview for this profile). The support of the other counsel in the team enabled Bill to find the time to complete the application for the KC Competition. In the three years before the application Bill only worked on this one case, so he sought and was given permission by the KC Appointments Panel to go back further than three years for twelve cases. All Bill’s cases had typed openings and submissions, so his assessors were able to refresh their memories of the cases, and the work Bill had done. Before deciding to submit his application Bill went through each of these twelve cases to check they could provide sufficient evidence of the competencies. He was mentored by Heidi Stonecliffe KC, which allowed him to understand what was required to make a successful application. Where Bill’s cases involved sensitive matters, he could not rely on the specific facts of those matters but was able to explain the applicable law and procedure, which the Panel understood and accepted.

Bill’s interview was arranged for an afternoon in Manchester. He was due to be in court in Manchester that morning, but another member of the prosecution team volunteered to present the evidence to allow Bill to prepare for the interview and importantly be fresh for it. As the interview guidance suggested, Bill prepared examples of the competencies not given in his application, which he took into the interview as an aide memoir, although he only needed to refer to them for the full reference of a reported Cout of Appeal case he prosecuted. Bill was nervous when the interview began, but the Panel interviewers picked this up and immediately put him at his ease. They told him the competency they were going to ask about and asked clear fair questions, which led to the interview being an enjoyable experience.

As Bill’s job is to lead large multidisciplinary teams, he views his appointment as Kings Counsel as a recognition of the excellence of the work of all the people in those teams, which include CPS lawyers, Caseworkers and Managers and Officers and analysts in the National Crime Agency, Regional Organised Crime Unit and Lancashire Constabulary Force Major Investigations Team.