Home / Articles & Publications

Through The Looking Glass

by Rory Field  

The Chambers system

At first sight the chambers' system is thriving in the larger cities in Australia, writes Rory Field. Barristers gather together to share accommodation and services much as they do in London. In New South Wales the traditional centre of the Bar is in Phillip Street and particularly Wentworth and Selborne Chambers, a large city office building wholly owned by barristers.

A barrister from London would at first glance feel at home in chambers which each fill a floor of the building. He would find the same quiet, book lined corridors and rooms, with a slightly greater emphasis on information technology and a marginally more professional image.

Getting work

A major difference between the two chambers' systems is in the means of acquiring work. In London, a young barrister, having survived the experience of pupillage and been given a tenancy can hope to exist, at least at first, on returns from solicitors associated with his more established elders. With a little luck and hard work, the junior tenant will establish his own links with some of these solicitors and become counsel of first choice for some of their cases.

This system is based on the senior barrister having benefited from the system when he was starting out and from his need to have hearings covered professionally to the satisfaction of the solicitor and lay client when he is unavailable.

In Sydney by comparison, although there is a clerking system it is neither as powerful nor as influential as that in London. Solicitors are not so receptive to a culture of returning cases and may choose barristers of their own choice who are not in the same chambers if a brief is returned. Accordingly, barristers are more careful not to double book and tend to follow a case more closely through the court system than they might in London. The situation is, if anything, more extreme in Brisbane, where counsel largely clerk themselves.

Waiting for work

The result of the problem of acquiring work is that an unknown barrister may receive no work at all. Because of this, there is not the same intake of students fresh out of higher education into the Australian Bar as is seen in England and Wales. A much more usual route into the Bar is for a lawyer to start his career as a solicitor, gain strong contacts and a good reputation, and only then transfer to the Bar.

A further incentive to mature entry to the Bar in Sydney is the prohibitive costs of entry. The London model is that of the avuncular chambers where the junior tenant pays 20% of his gross receipts to chambers. The fact that those receipts may be negligible in no way bars him from all the benefits of chambers. Indeed, as the youngest he may even be awarded some kind of political influence on a chambers committee. The picture is very different in Sydney. A prestigious chambers might often take an intake exclusively of barristers who had already established themselves in less exclusive chambers. A payment of A$300,000 might be required to buy an average room. On top of that capital outlay would come significant charges on an annual basis. Given that a capital sum of A$450,000 would purchase a private house in Sydney, it means that some of the most prestigious chambers may be made up of people who have taken up to a decade to make contacts before coming to the Bar.

Counsel for the prosecution

A major difference for the junior criminal practitioner is that there is not an availability of publicly funded prosecution work to provide opportunities to gain experience in the Crown Court and earn a little money. Most of the prosecution work is done in house by well paid, highly motivated Crown prosecutors with rights of audience in all the Courts. The employment package on offer, together with the good reputation and high morale of the DPP's office are a sufficient incentive that many apply for each prosecution post.

The fledgling Sydney barrister would thus be left to fight for de- fence work, the publicly funded part of which can compete with that of London for its low rates of remuneration. The only prosecution work which is regularly briefed out to barristers in private practice is the federal prosecution work. This in the main part is white collar crime and drugs importation, is specialist and is limited in scope and-availability.

Growing old disgracefully

Will we follow the Australian pattern? With all the changes and the increased difficulty in gaining the appropriate court exposure for young barristers, will the Bar in England and Wales be a Bar where all the tenants will be in their mid-thirties or older, unless they have private money or exceptional contacts? Quite how this will help the laudable ideal of making the bar more in contact with the population at large in its age, class, sexual and ethnic mix is anyone's gum.

Having painted a picture of an Australian Bar where it is even harder to get a start than in London, is that re- ally a fair analysis? At least in Sydney a pupil does not have the disheartening experience of being unable to find a pupillage at all, as often happens in London. Arguably the system is more of a meritocracy and the fledgling barrister will be able to find a pupil master and a room somewhere. With sufficient determination, if the barrister is good and builds a reputation, success will follow.

For better or worse?

So is the position better or worse in Australia? Barristers in both jurisdictions work under considerable pressure. But somehow, despite the problems at the Bar in Australia, one is left with the impression that the average Australian barrister has a better quality of life than his counterpart here. With property cheaper, restaurants and hotels much better value, a stunning countryside and clement weather, a relatively successful Australian barrister can still make a 'good living", something which seems to be increasingly hard for his London counterpart.

This article originally appear in Counsel magazine.

8 October 1999

Top of page