I can and do bore for England and Wales on the topic of well ordered briefs.
If your opponent has a lever arch file and notebook and nothing else, you can be pretty confident that that lawyer will be master of his brief.
There are two possibilities. Either the solicitors instructing the barrister have sent the papers beautifully prepared, thus maximising the prospects of the barrister being able to focus on the difficult parts of the case.
Or the solicitors (and barrister's predecessors) have NOT done their job properly and sent the papers in a mess. The barrister who spends time sorting and filing them, however full of irritation at having to do so, is a barrister who by the end will know their contents well.
It's not enough simply to have MOST of the papers in the file and some loose. That is simply the sign of someone who has not updated the file with the new material.
In court, the barrister with the papers in a lever arch file will be able to find any obscure document the Judge is looking for, while the less well organised opponent is frantically scrabbling among the papers to try to find it.
And the chances of dropping papers and looking foolish while you're engaged in shuttle diplomacy between client and opponent are much reduced...
Dull stuff perhaps: but of such things are victories made.
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