The Murray Scheme … Trust account interest for unemployed lawyers … Cocktails on the pier … Judge’s gastronomic experiences in Manchester … Notes from The Map

TASWEGIA is a land of innovation and invention, such as to make the PM proud. 

Under a new scheme money from the local Solicitors’ Guarantee Fund is being ploughed back into the profession, in this instance to assist the employment prospects of otherwise unemployed freshly minted lawyers. 

The fund, which lives off interest paid on solicitors’ trust accounts, was designed to bail out clients of sticky-fingered lawyers and meet other statutory purposes, such as legal aid, discipline and bondage, etc. 

Under a bold plan some of the loot is being sent back to the law firms whose trust money contributed to the guarantee fund in the first place – to encourage them to engage young unemployed barristers and solicitors out of law school.

The head of the Taswegian legal practice course Hugh (Don’t Hurry) Murray has come up with a plan that kills a couple of birds with the one stone. 

One leg of the scheme is for law firms to receive $10,000 from the guarantee fund, if they take on a new graduate to assist otherwise unrepresented people at the Magistrates Court. To get the $10,000 in hand the firms have to convince the Law Society that they otherwise would not have taken on a first year lawyer. 

The other leg is that unemployed graduates get to work directly out of an office at the Magistrates Court where they are rostered to work two days every three weeks for $300 a day. 

It’s hardly going to keep the poor wretches alive, but at least they are gaining local court experience in adjournments, pleas in mitigation, family violence orders and restricted licence applications. 

The Murray scheme has helped clear the lists at the Madges’ courts and given the youngsters a boost in personal confidence. When the plan kicked off it was expected that 1,000 clients would be assisted in the first year. In the first five months of this year already there have been 600 representations by fledgling advocates. 

The scheme also has a personal coach, the legendary madge Peter (Pergie) Dixon, who presided for 26 years before succumbing to the irresistible impulse to attend Test cricket matches. 

Seventeen unemployed lawyers were on board when the scheme launched. Four who worked out of the court now have full-time jobs, three who signed onto law firms are also employed and 10 found jobs at the Justice Department. 

Huge celebration last week in Hobart Town for the 40th birthday of local law shop Wallace Wilkinson & Webster. 

The shop was started by David Wallace, Gabriel Haros and David’s then wife, Julia Mead. 

The president of the Legislative Council Jim “Wilkie” Wilkinson composed a special non-scanning poem, which he read to the assembled alumni, including Planning Commissioner Greg Geason, Premier “Silicon” Will Hodgman, magistrate Chris Webster (of Ellis case fame) and Peter Lyons (now teaching the craft of advocacy in the Old Dart). 

In the 1980s Gabby Haros was deselected as a Liberal Party candidate for the state seat of Denison and unsuccessfully ran as an independent. 

Later he was employed by Lindsay Fox’s outfit Linfox Australia, only to take his employer to court, alleging breach of contract. 

Last month saw HH Stephen Estcourt in Manchester, hearing evidence in a big damages case. 

Holly Raper became a quadriplegic with catastrophic brain injury after a bike accident on a King Island farm in 2011. She has made a $40 million damages claim against the owner of the farm, David Bowden. 

HH took evidence in Manchester about the cost of Ms Raper’s care and was accompanied by his associate and tipstaff along with lawyers Ken Read and Tom Cox. 

Estcourt is the Matt Preston of the Tasmanian judiciary and has lovingly chronicled on Facebook his gastronomic experience on the trip to England’s north-west. His posts went like this: