Pulling up the anchor at Slater & Gordon … Where are the silken crime briefs? … Bulletin from The Map … Language of the law … Human right to use the court’s bathroom … Theodora reports
KORDA Mentha and Anchorage Capital Partners have been through Slater & Gordon like a packet of salts.
In the latest round 93 people have been handed pink slips and shown the door. Essentially, jobs in “shared services” have been halved. The slicing and dicing has occurred in offices throughout the country, but have been felt more harshly in Melbourne.
Some were told to reapply for the positions they previously held and, distressingly, staff were asked to decide among themselves who should hold onto the remaining jobs.
One person was emailed her farewell package while 12,000 miles away on annual leave.
All four Melbourne receptionists and organisational people walked, although some were begged to stay. They decided the shop looked in such bad shape that they were keen to jump overboard as quickly as possible.
The place is in chaos yet Andrew Grech, one of the architects of the disaster, remains on the board.
Slaters is one of Anchorage’s “operation turnarounds”.
Brendan Campbell didn’t pass muster for silken appointment in NSW’s 2017 crop of new senior counsel.
His application shows he was admitted to the NSW bar in 2014 and some thought that it’s a bit cheeky for a barrister of three years standing to put up his hand for silk.
However, that’s not the full story. Campbell was admitted in Queensland in 1985 and had been the assistant director of public prosecutions in that state.
Currently, he is at Mark Sherring Chambers, the crown prosecutors’ haunt in Newcastle.
The bigger question is why were so few criminal law barristers appointed silk? There was only one, Huw Baker, a crown prosecutor in Sydney and none from the private bar, even though 26 with criminal practices applied.
Big swinging crime barrister Tim Game from Forbes Chambers is on the silk selection panel and he would have a fair say in filtering the contenders from among the crime briefs.
The small list of 11 successful SC applicants may be a reflection of an unwritten policy of keeping silk numbers below 17 percent of the total bar, particularly in challenging economic conditions. It is now at 16.6 percent, the lowest percentage in the past three years.
The percentage of male barristers with silk is now at 18.89 percent, while the comparable figure for female barristers is 8.74 percent, even though women makeup 22.2 percent of the bar.
It seems puzzling that merit could not be found among the other 25 crime briefs who went home without a rose.
It’s not as though the Liberal government is without the usual stack of lawyers – indeed Elise Archer, a former lawyer, was moved from speaker of the house of assembly to be the new minister for justice.
Premier and attorney general is a doubled headed occupation that does not sit well and Brendan Gogarty, law lecturer from UTas, was out of the blocks making the point that the arrangement is rife with actual and potential conflicts of interest. It’s not healthy for the head of government to advising himself on constitutional and legislative issues.
Of course, on rare occasions previous premiers and prime ministers have taken on the attorney general’s portfolio.
Gogarty suggests that Hodgman has driven one more nail into the coffin of the independence of the AG. The role had been increasingly politicised over the last century and attorneys general in recent times have failed to stand up for the judges or against other government ministers.
Gogarty says that the consolidation of premier and AG makes you wonder if it’s necessary to have an attorney general at all, or just leave it to the solicitor general and the DPP.
This is all the more relevant at the federal level where the main functions of the AG’s department will be shifting to the delightful Peter Dutton at Home Affairs, leaving more time for Soapy Brandis to inspect his fingernails.
Bar chairman Andrew Langdon was spitting chips about this in his column for Counsel Magazine.
He also took a swipe at justice bureaucrats from the ministry who use terms such as “court users … customers … stakeholders”, instead of “witnesses … judges … lawyers … litigants,” etc.
Langton told his readers that this “wretched use of language” …
“… is predicated on the basis that the courts deliver a product – justice presumably – as a ‘service’, which comes as a measurable cost, and that if the business case for the service does not add up then, one way or another, the users will have to pay; if they have the means, through court fees, if not through the removal of, or cuts to, legal aid …
The guff about ‘service users’ continues for the moment, unabated.”
The language of the law is also creating headaches in Victoria where Michael McGarvie, the legal services commissioner, has had to get to grips with the meaning of the word “principal”.
He has found that lawyers holding employee practising certificates have been referring to themselves as “principal”.
He points out that, quite apart from the English language, the word has a specific meaning under the Uniform Law. It can either refer to a sole practitioner, a partner, a supervising legal practitioner of a CLC, or a director of an incorporated legal practice.
It’s all too confusing for customers … sorry, clients.
Penalties will apply if people who are not principals continue with the ruse.
We were quite taken by Justice Stephen Rothman’s reasons in an application made by the crown in what is known in NSW as the Spiteri-Ahern criminal trial.
The prosecutor sought an order to restrict the use by one of the accused of a public toilet in the court precinct.
The crown was “utilising” the male toilet “when defendant Amin Zraika entered the “facility”.
Even though there was no suggestion of threats or improper conduct the prosecutor David Patch “had genuine concerns as to his vulnerability snd safety”.
There was no evidence before the court about any danger posed by Zraika and the application was treated initially by defence counsel with some “distain”.
Zraika is charged with being an accessory after the fact to the murder of a Rebel bikie, Ray Pasnin.
When Rothman said he had decided to reject the application Patch “sought to reagitate the issue because his instructing solicitor saw the accused in the foyer of the court and they were in each other’s vicinity”.
The judge said:
“I can imagine the accused may well have also been seen in a nearby street or coffee shop as well …
David Patch, it will be remembered, was the barrister who corroborated Barbara Ramjam’s story that then student hothead Tony Abbott intimidated her in 1977 after she beat him for election as president of the Students’ Representative Council at the University of Sydney.