Brawling lawyers and customary QCs

The QC in trouble over a quip, a QC who went on strike, and the barristers paid less than teachers
Here in England, the summit of legal excitement is the distant threat of criminal barristers going on strike if their rates of pay are not improved. Scottish thrill-seekers are having a much more satisfying time, with a recent abundance of stirring personal and professional stories about lawyers.

The flamboyant Donald Findlay QC, one of Scotland's most able and respected defence advocates, is in trouble for telling what has been described as an anti-Catholic joke at a social function in Northern Ireland. He is now having to consider resigning from a prominent post with the Society of Advocates. His quip (which he doesn't deny making) was along the lines of, "It's very smoky in here. What's happened, has another fucking Pope died?" He also told a joke about nuns and turnips, which I suspect may be the same joke I was told at school, though with cucumbers as the vegetable in question.

Findlay, you may remember, got into similar trouble with his professional body in 1999 and was fined for singing rabidly sectarian songs at a Rangers football club do. Then there was the party last week at a five-star Edinburgh hotel, given by one of Scotland's leading law firms, Brodies. Normally an untroubled annual affair, this year's function ended in a brawl and "fists flying everywhere" according to one witness. Unfortunately involved in the fracas was Alistair Orr, a partner in the firm. But no longer. Brodies has confirmed that Orr has resigned as a partner, with immediate effect.

Away from social shenanigans, Scottish criminal advocates have already proved that what their English counterparts just talk about, they do. Last Friday, a case in the court of criminal appeal was unable to take place because the advocates had withdrawn from the case in protest against the low legal aid fees offered to them.

To be fair to the English, one barrister, Nigel Rumfitt QC, wrote an article in the bar's in-house magazine Counsel revealing that he had refused to make his closing speech to the jury after a long murder trial because the Legal Services Commission, which controls legal aid money, had refused to pay him for his time in preparing the long and complex address. Only when the judge intervened did the commission come up with some money, and the defence case was able to be properly put to the jury.

Similar stories abound. What a way to run a criminal justice system.

· I am not accustomed to sympathising with lawyers over their allegedly paltry earnings, but the criminal barristers at the lower end of the trial spectrum do have a case to be paid higher legal aid fees - and remember, it's the clients who suffer most if they don't get adequate legal representation.

Poorly remunerated barristers used to complain that they earned less than plumbers, which didn't impress me much - you can still be pretty rich on incomes lower than plumbers'. But now they complain that they earn less than teachers, and that's serious. On the other hand, last year one criminal defence barrister got £800,000 in legal aid fees, and this year, the Department for Constitutional Affairs admits, someone is likely to top the £1m mark.

· The new solicitor general, Mike O'Brien, has been appointed a QC. Why? "It is the practice," the press release says, "that the attorney general and solicitor general are appointed QC, if they do not already hold this rank on appointment." It may be "the practice," but surely, in these days of mass dismantlement of legal practices and traditions that don't meet modern needs, that can't be a valid reason. Indeed, only last year the lord chancellor decided that it was wrong for QCs to be chosen by lord chancellors, as had been done for centuries - no question there of continuing "the practice". Instead, a new committee of high-powered lawyers and non-lawyers, independent of government, has just been set up to pick the QCs of the future.

Why go on dishing out honorific QCs to politicians who become solicitors general? In previous times, attorneys general and occasionally solicitors general used to argue important cases in court and it was thought right that they had the prestige title to go with the significance of the trial. In recent times solicitors general have rarely gone to court. Besides, I don't think that O'Brien, as a solicitor (all but one of his predecessors having been barristers), has the necessary professional certificate to argue cases in the higher courts.

So this automatic award of QC has no practical value or effect. There is no reason for the continued existence of the custom. It should be abolished.

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