Fonting and spacing special leave submissions … Bar refers itself to the Bureau de Spank … McClintock SC opposes Inspector Dave’s scheme to defenestrate ICAC … Barristers Chambers Limited – a great consumer experience … Former Tas solicitor general Sealy knows a thing or two  

THE High Court’s recent insistence that special leave applications be filed in 12 point Times New Roman (or equivalent font size) and no more than 12 pages in length (10 pages for responses) has been met with some creative initiatives.  

Reports have reached us that some briefs have discovered a font that looks like 12 point, but in reality is closer to 10, which allows more words and argumentation to be crammed into the 12 pages at the required line spacing of 1.5.  

This is why innovative thinkers at the bar are paid big bucks.   

Someone at the court better get out the slide-rule and make sure everything conforms with High Court Amendment (2016 Measures No 1) Rules 2016.  

Remember the barrage of leaks from within the NSW bar council to intrepid Murdoch hacks?  

The secret information that found its way into the pages of The Australian concerned a decision to caution Geoffrey Watson SC over an interview he gave the Financial Review about his work as counsel assisting ICAC.  

The complaint was laid by former hard-right Liberal MP Chris Hartcher, now out of parliament with his tail between his legs after getting singed by the anti-corruption body.  

Hartcher’s mission was to punish Watson for causing grief to his unattractive faction of the parliamentary party, which saw 10 MPs bailing out of the bear-pit after being caught with tainted money in their trousers.  

Hacks at The Australian were only too willing to assist and lapped up the decision by the bar’s senior common room to birch Watson, the leaking of which attracts a penalty under the Act.    

To be seen to be doing something the bar council has now asked the Office of the Legal Services Commissioner to investigate the leak. In effect, the council has referred itself to the OLSC. 

It must be hoping that nothing too embarrassing will be discovered and that no councillor has to go into the library with a loaded revolver.   

Which gets us to Bruce McClintock SC’s two-and-a-half page demolition of Inspector Dave Levine’s plans for a Claytons Corruption Commission.    

Levine is part of the Margaret Cunneen love-in lobby and a darling of the anti-ICAC dingbats from News Corp. The inspector made a report to Premier Baird in May this year on proposals to cauterise the corruption fighter and expand his own power. 

McClintock has a sound knowledge of ICAC and its functions having done two major investigations and reports for the government, one in 2005 and another last year (with Smiler Gleeson).    

McClintock argues that private hearings defeat the purpose of exposing corruption, while exonerating people whose conduct has found to be corrupt reveals “a misunderstanding of ICAC’s role, its purpose, the Act itself and, indeed, of our criminal justice system”.  

Take that, Inspector Dave.  

ICAC is a fact-finding, investigative body and, as McClintock points out, it makes its findings on the balance of probabilities and on material that is not admissible in criminal proceedings. As a result it is not inconceivable that there will be different results at the commission and in a court.  

An acquittal by a court, “does not mean that the person in question did not engage in corrupt conduct still less that the person is ‘innocent’.” 

McClintock also points out that it is a “matter of concern” that since Levine has been the inspector he has conducted no audits, a process designed to ensure that ICAC conforms with best practice.  

All in all, McClintock’s submission is a strong put-down of the ideas that would result in getting business back to normal for Sydney’s spivs and crooks. In doing so, he also reinforces the key elements that should be part of any federal Integrity Commission.  

Other submissions on Levine’s recommendations can be found here.  

Yarraside briefs were alarmed to learn of the resignation of Gary Brinkworth, the CEO of Barristers’ Chambers Ltd, the outfit with a stranglehold on the business of advocates’ accomodation. 

Many will remember the brave, but lonely, campaign of the Wyles One to get gold plating for silks, for which he conducted polls and lobbied furiously.  

Now he breaks the news that Gary is quitting his job of managing barristers rooms “to return to the fuel industry”, and a job at United Petroleum – “Australia’s largest, independently owned, vertically integrated fuel refining business”.  

After life at BCL, that sounds like a refreshing change.  

Ex-Taswegian solicitor general Leigh Sealy gave a rousing, jape-laden speech to startled law graduates at a Hobart dinner late last month. 

After 35 years of grinding out jokes for members of  the legal profession Sealy had come to learn a thing of two. For instance, he remembered Associate Justice Stephen Holt as a young man, who dreamed of a career in aeronautics.  

At the legal practice course in the 4th floor of the old T&G building on the corner of Murray and Collins Streets, Holt would spend hours and hours designing and making small prototype unmanned helicopters.  

He would then conduct test flights by launching the latest models out of the window and watching them make their way up or down Murray Street – depending upon which way the wind was blowing. 

“That is why,” Sealy told his fresh faced audience, “even to this day – when appearing in His Honour’s court, it always pays – before launching any submission – to know which way the wind is blowing!” 

Sealy also has made a study of law firm names, and among his very favourite is the Brisbane firm, then known as Trout Bernays & Tingle. 

“It always sounded to me like the name of a dish one might find on the menu at a high-class bordello – ‘Some Trout Bernays & Tingle, sir?” 

It merged with another firm to create a new, and more expensive-sounding, dish called Henderson Lahey Trout Bernays.  

He blames the German accounting system called Daro for the trend that saw the shortening of law firm names. The program only allowed space for 20 characters for the name of the firm depositing money into the office or trust account – hence the spate of truncations.  

Page Seager Bethune Thompson & Gray turned into Page Seager. Murdoch Clarke Cosgrove & Drake was boiled down to Murdoch Clarke.  

The former Tassie solicitor general decried the loss on alternate Mondays of the court list known as Miscellaneous Civil Business. He told the fledgling lawyers that the list comprised any matter, application, cause, motion or other proceeding which it was estimated would not occupy more than one hour.  

There were usually 30 to 40 hours worth of new matters, together with the same volume of accumulated old matters that hadn’t been reached or had been adjourned a fortnight earlier.  

All of this was listed before a single judge in the available time of six hours.  

“Of course, most matters were not heard at all. Nevertheless, here was a splendid opportunity for everyone to go down to court, frock up and have a good old gossip – all at the client’s expense.”  

Why on earth would the ritual of Miscellaneous Civil Business be abolished? 

An after dinner address by an ex-solicitor general would not be complete without a hoary story about another ex-solicitor general – in this instance the story of David (Bubba) Bennett and Roddy Meagher who, allegedly, met in a lift shortly after Bubba took silk.  

“Woddy, who do you suppose that my bar jacket has so much more bwaid on it than yours?”  

“Who knows, one of you – unlike me – may go on to be a successful comedian – or better still, a lion-tamer.”