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A couple of meta comments on the weekend’s legal related issues. 1) If I said something here in my private capacity which profoundly went against my firm’s stated values, I would expect there to be serious consequences for me. This is not about freedom of speech.
2) As a solicitor, I can choose what cases and clients I take on. Barristers can’t - if I instruct a barrister, they must do their best for the client whether or not they agree with the client’s position or like the client. This is very important. >
It means everyone can get a barrister who will argue their case as strongly as it can be argued within the law. I’ve instructed barristers who have previously argued against the legal argument I want to put forward now. I do this because they are good at their job, not because>
I think they are morally attached to the position that they argued before. Lawyers are mostly hired guns. I have argued diametrically opposed legal positions on defending possession claims, for example, where it was in the client’s interests >
A conversation I have to have with nearly every client is the difference between the law and moral judgment (or indeed justice). We do law. At the very best, we can try to drag it into an area vaguely bounding justice. And the other side’s lawyers are just doing their job >
doing their best for their client, within the law (by and large). There is no point in being outraged, I say to my clients, that they aren’t overwhelmed by the sheer justice of your case. >
So, people really need to understand that by and large, lawyers don’t make a case because they believe it, they make it because it is legally arguable and in their client’s interests - for they must act in their client’s interests. And barristers, for extremely good reasons >
don’t get to choose what instructions to accept if it is something they are competent to handle. Nobody’s case should be at the mercy of the personal morality and views of individual barristers. Access to justice is not just for the likeable.
(Of course, the extra curricular, unpaid, legislative drafting and advice stuff that I do, I do because I believe in it. But that is a whole different ball game.)
