Lawyers Weekly: Top Ten Issues of 2005 (1 Viewer)

[Frigid]

A summary of the top ten issues as covered by Lawyers Weekly this year... feel free to discuss

Lack of Professional Satisfaction: "Many law firms are not doing enough to satisfy their staff – from new entrants to partners – who are unhappy and not working to their full potential.

As early as May, Paul Montgomery, former managing partner at Freehills in Melbourne, told Lawyers Weekly that unhappiness has serious ramifications for senior lawyers in particular. Firms can tell when partners are unhappy, and axe them as their productivity is affected, he said ..."


Billing Issues - "The Billable Hour: bane of lawyers’ lives or the only way they can function? At the end of 2005 there is still no definitive agreement among the profession.

However, many clients wanted to know what their legal services were going to cost up front. There were also many in the profession who decried the potential of time billing to reward inefficiencies, and some who decided to try out the options."


Want for Work-Life Balance; Staff-Turnover - "As firms of all types and sizes shed talent at an alarming rate over the past year, they began to realise the urgency of implementing systems to retain their lawyers. But of particular concern was the incoming generation of lawyers, who want new things from their careers and are prepared to look around the market in order to get them.

By the end of the year, it became evident that firms could no longer rest on their laurels – it didn’t matter if they had a good reputation among clients or if they were a top-tier firm – generation Y wants a quality of life as well as an interesting career, and big pay packets are not going to win them over."


Crennan J's appointment to the High Court Bench - "The impending retirement of High Court Justice Michael McHugh raised the question not only of who would replace him, but more specifically, would the new appointment to the bench be a woman. Calls from a wide range of quarters for a female judge – including from sitting High Court Justices – were met in September with the appointment to the bench of Federal Court Justice Susan Crennan."


Human Rights Issues - "Attention was focused less on the legal aspects of matters traditionally assigned to the human rights bracket – such as the treatment of asylum seekers and Australia’s compliance with international conventions. Rather, the focus was on judicial process and the administration of justice by overseas courts and authorities charged with upholding the law.

...Three of the most notable cases involved Australian citizens caught up in drug-related activities in South-East Asia. Most recently, in the case of convicted drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van, some Australian lawyers argued there was a case for taking his case to the International Court of Justice. Also, Law Institute of Victoria president Victoria Strong wrote to Singapore’s president asking Singapore to exercise constitutional discretion in granting him a reprieve."


IR Reform - "Wholesale reforms to Australia’s industrial relations system – along with anti-terror laws – were the big legislative news of the year. There was strong opposition to the haste with which the law was pushed through parliament, but lawyers stood to gain in the rush to understand what it all meant.

Given the magnitude of the changes – which amalgamate a range of attempts to reform IR laws by the federal Government over its past decade in office – lawyers have been closely involved in the drafting of the new laws, and advising on their implications for clients."


Campaign against Anti-Terror Laws - "The legal profession campaigned as one against the imposition of unprecedented anti-terror laws introduced in Australia after the London bombings, passing the laws with only minor amendments earlier this month.

Along with the Law Council, most state law societies said they supported appropriate safeguards, but cautioned that the new laws went too far in winding back civil liberties."


Dissolution of Coudert Bros LLP - "After months of negotiations over merger opportunities with other firms, international law firm Coudert Brothers made the shock move in August of admitting it would be closing all of its offices and that it would stop paying staff from November.

With three months to find other jobs, whole practice groups in offices including Sydney and Melbourne, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Milan and Prague, among others, then began looking for work."


Expansion in Asia - "Asia continued to be a great source of interest, and work, for lawyers in 2005. But not all was smooth within the region."


Effect of Tort Reform - "Tort Reforms continued to bite law firms in NSW in 2005, with the extension of existing bans on lawyers advertising personal injury services to non-lawyers.

From 1 July, the Legal Profession Regulation 2005 prohibited practitioners advertising personal and work injury services through others who are not lawyers, including publications in general and companies that provide referrals to personal and work injury lawyers.

Throughout the year the profession continued its attacks on the wider reforms introduced in various compensation acts and the Civil Liability Act 2002, claiming they had led to unjust decisions for plaintiffs and had not led to significant reductions in insurance premiums."

 

[neo o]

Oh come on, there's heaps of satisfaction at law firms. They have Christmas parties!

PARTY - IT'S THE LAW
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/the-bubbly-bursts/2005/12/22/1135032132856.html?page=2

Law firm Christmas parties have traditionally been mostly sober affairs, with plenty of backslapping and juniors doing their best not to offend any partners. Well, that was until Freehills threw its party, cheekily themed a "Pinch of Glamour".

One spy reports that female partners and staff were gobsmacked when the entertainment turned out to be bikini-clad go-go dancers. It was also a bit of bad timing, as the company had apparently signed a new equal-opportunity policy the same day. Officially, we may never know, as the Freehills spokeswoman failed to provide any details.

Other firms around town have also been getting into the festive spirit. The Mallesons Stephen Jaques party theme this year was The Aviator; meanwhile the Allens Arthur Robinson party was simply themed "Hollywood". But it was those crazy funsters over at Clayton Utz who took the cake this year, with one group of lawyers turning up to the Bollywood-themed party dressed as call centre operators.

 

[Not-That-Bright]

Expansion in Asian - "Asia continued to be a great source of interest, and work, for lawyers in 2005. But not all was smooth within the region."

That sort of mistake can cost the firm MILLIONS!

 

[santaslayer]

Looks like it was edited.

Expansion to Asian seems to be the most obvious 'next step'. :uhhuh:

Not very good at discussion. Explains my CP.

 

[Frigid]

more bits and pieces, this time from Richard Ackland:

A whizz of a year for the common law

When it comes to the moment of reflection on a year well spent it is hard to find a field of human endeavour more satisfying to contemplate than lawyers and the law. There's such an array of riches that only a few ripe selections will have to do.

...

Fortunately we can feel a lot safer in the knowledge that criminals are being locked up like never before. The Australian Institute of Criminology reported that the jail population had grown 5 per cent a year since 1984. The then premier Bob Carr said longer jail sentences were behind the "drop" in the state's crime rate. When he said that in June, NSW had a record 9000 people in jail, costing $173 a day each.

Lawyers are often as close to the headlines as their clients. Cliff Pannam, QC, admitted to The Age it was "a bloody silly thing" to get shickered after his wife discovered some letters from his girlfriend. As a result his driving licence was suspended for 34 months, and he has to train and bus it to town, with Mrs Pannam driving him to the station.

Sydney silk Derek Cassidy, celebrating 50 years as a barrister, told the Herald that when he first went to the bar, Selborne Chambers consisted of three floors: "Two floors of barristers and a brothel on top."

Margaret Cunneen, a senior NSW Crown prosecutor, is being investigated by the watchdog of professional integrity for telling Newcastle University students that some lawyers suffered from "a kind of misplaced altruism that it is somehow a noble thing to assist a criminal to evade conviction".

Colin Lovitt, a Melbourne QC, told the Carlton Cricket Club that "if you're going to be raped, you might as well lie back and enjoy it". He said afterwards that "it's an old expression and in no way, shape or form is it supposed to be serious". Earlier Lovitt had got into hot water for calling a Queensland magistrate a "cretin".

A Californian defence lawyer, Ronald Miller, 56, also had a career as a porn star and appeared in 90 films including Justice Your Ass. The California Bar Association said it didn't have a policy prohibiting such activity. Still in the land of the free, Jack Steiner, a former head of the Louisville Bar Association, was debarred for life for stealing $US93,000 ($127,000) of his clients' money. His "pastoral counsellor" told the court Steiner was unable to make good decisions due to an "arrested and complicated grieving process".

Judicial officers also had more than their fair share of extra curial moments. The magistrate Pat O'Shane sent a helpful little email to her husband's golf club: "He no longer resides at this house. He's been spending the afternoons fornicating with a near neighbour." She also told The Bulletin that her antidepressant medication, "literally … keeps me sane".

Judicial tardiness was also much in evidence. A Family Court judge from Tasmania, Michael Hannon, was accused of taking up to four years to deliver some of his reasons. One anonymous victim said: "You're trapped in Hannonworld and you can't get out."

As for sleeping judges, a former member of the Court of Appeal, Roddy Meagher, said he couldn't see too much wrong with it: "They usually wake up a few minutes later and if they've missed something they can always read the transcript."

Finally, any cold collation of words from the past would not be replete without something from Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court. He gave possibly the year's grimmest insight into the court: "A culture of mutual respect reinforced by happy social intercourse" had never been a feature of the High Court. At least, "not in my judicial lifetime".

We can't wait for more of the exquisite finery of the law to unfurl in 2006.

as an aside, here is Kirby J's latest speechhttp://www.hcourt.gov.au/speeches/kirbyj/kirbyj_1005.pdf.