‘Nursery’ of junior bar work has dried up

A lot of the smaller cases are no longer going to court, diminishing the amount of work available where junior barristers can learn the ropes, according to the Queensland Bar Association president.

Lara Bullock • 11 March 2016 • The Bar

Speaking with Lawyers Weekly, Christopher Hughes QC, the president of the Queensland Bar Association, said that junior barristers are struggling to gain experience because of the decreasing levels of appropriate work.

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“What’s happened over the years is the 'nursery' of smaller work that barristers cut their teeth on has been drying up,” Mr Hughes QC said.

“A lot of the smaller court cases are no longer running. The cases between insurance companies, such as motor vehicle accidents and client work injuries, have dried up because the big insurance companies tend not to litigate any more, instead they tend to settle things quickly.”

He added: “In the criminal field, a lot of good work for young junior barristers was committal hearings and there's less of that work now too.”

Mr Hughes QC said barristers can only learn by going to court on those smaller cases.

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“You don’t really learn how to be a barrister at law school, to be brutally frank,” Mr Hughes QC said.

“We do the best we can with Bar Practice courses to try and teach people how to be a barrister, but my strong belief is the best way to learn to be a barrister is to actually appear in court.”

Another contributing factor is the increase in private practice lawyers who are making court appearances and are no longer engaging barristers.

“Firms with solicitors are actually eroding a lot of the work that the junior bar do, and even some of the senior bar too, because they're doing a lot more appearance work and they're doing a lot more advice work,” he said.

“We don’t need to attack the solicitors necessarily, but we need to try and get the message across that engaging barristers, including junior barristers, can be very cost-effective.”

With Australia’s ageing population, Mr Hughes QC is concerned that there will be a mass retirement of senior barristers with no junior barristers to replace them.

“In Brisbane, it’s a fairly old profession, 60 per cent of our members have been at the bar for longer than 10 or 12 years and, while there are new younger barristers coming along all the time, I’m not sure that trend will necessarily continue,” he said.

“It’s likely there will be a retirement of a lot of senior barristers, and I’m just not sure that it's as easy to get started at the bar as it once was.”

JC Monday, 14 March 2016

Good article. There has been a significant increase in the involvement of law firms into the insurance claims market over the last decade, including into areas previously serviced by non legal providers especially within the unlitigated or routine insurance claims environment. Many insurers are highly cost conscious in today's market preferring a reduction in the use of litigation and in the use of legal practitioners and insurance focused law firms where possible. Surely this has an inevitable flow on effect as contemplated within this article including to Counsel working at least in part within the legal/ insurance sector. With the ever increasing level of legal graduates seeking employment including in almost any related field; with working lawyers required to generate income for the firm; and with corporate clients and legal firms looking to limit costs by completing tasks 'in house', perhaps this reflects a rebalancing of a saturated legal services market at all levels back to equilibrium. Insurance work aside, surely there remains opportunities for Junior Counsel within the many other core areas traditionally serviced by law firms?

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DVF Friday, 11 March 2016

The cost is not the issue. Solicitors with 1 to 3 years PAE are often charged out by firms at $300 per hour or more. $200 or $250 per hour for a junior barrister is therefore reasonable particularly given that, in most cases, the junior barrister has at least a few years experience as a solicitor. In my 4 years at the bar, I have never had a brief pulled from me or been rejected for a brief on the basis of my hourly/daily rate ($2,500 plus GST per day). It is embarrassing to see inexperienced junior solicitors being mauled in Court for simple errors which ought not be made. On occasion it is unavoidable or entirely appropriate for solicitors to appear (particularly in the lower courts), but mostly it is driven by a naive attempt by their employer to save the client money or keep revenue in-house.

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Stuart Friday, 11 March 2016

The fact that junior barristers think they are worth upwards of $2500 is the biggest barrier to them getting work. A junior barrister should be happy getting half that to get the experience

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