Grand Poobah judicial snog … Thirst-quenching at fault … Late night knee balancing routine … News from The Map … Photo in circulation … From our Tasmanian affairs correspondent 

Unlike boozy revelries in previous years, which have seen the legal profession banned from respectable venues, the dinner itself was an unusually well-behaved affair at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Liverpool Street. 

As lawyers occupied themselves with choosing between eye filet or chicken wrapped in prosciutto, the Law Society president Trev McKenna explained that things had got busier, not slower. Commercial solicitors are going gangbusters and so too the conveyancing business. 

Afterwards, many thirsty lawyers trooped over to the Grand Poobah, described as a “dance & night club”. The DJ was in marvellous form, drinks flowed, shirts came adrift and there was an atmosphere of consensual unhinging. 

Justice Greg Geason from the Tas Supremes was certainly in the mood, having admitted that he was merrily libated. 

Geason is a handsome brute of a middle-aged man, so can it be surprising that his 20-something female associate ended-up on his lap in a close embrace? 

Maybe inspiration had been drawn from notorious Public Bar couch snogger, The Christian Porter. 

There’s a photo of the moment at the Poobah taken by someone from the DPP. It is doing the rounds of the legal caper in the hermit kingdom amid much tut-tutting. For a family-friendly organ like Justinian it would be inappropriate to publish the snap. 

Apparently, Minister Tudge was not on hand to insist the evidence be destroyed. 

Geason is an old chum of former premier Willy Hodgman and best man at Willy’s wedding. They worked together at two Hobart law shops. The premier insisted he excused himself from the appointment process. 

At the time, our Map correspondent reported that Philip Jackson SC, rather than Geason, had been recommended by the judicial selection panel to replace Shan Tennent on the court. 

Gregory, who had been a planning commissioner, had fingers in numerous Tasmanian pies and was regarded as well-credentialed for the job on the supremes. 

Nonetheless, in recent times, appeal judges have been giving him a bit of slap and tickle. Here he was quashed for apprehended bias; here he forgot about how cases should be pleaded since the adoption of the Judicature Act; and here he messed up a sentencing decision.   

Crisis talks about events at the Grand Poobah are underway.