By Rumpoled QC
So what do we think of the new QCs?
First, who has heard of them all?
Apart from some law students and a local publisher or two, name anyone who has ever heard of Richard Boast? And, coming from Waikato, infamous for being the thrush and chlamydia capital of New Zeland, where cousins can marry, it is not necessarily the highest echelon from which to emerge.
But is that too harsh?
My guess is that New Zealand would have a higher percentage of academics appointed than the UK. So far as I know Canada does not engage in this practice and no State or Territory in Australia does.
It is also possible that New Zealand QC academics are empirically higher than the UK although I have not actually looked at the physical numbers.
Margaret Casey – what do we know?
She is a dear old thing who rarely appears in court these days and is not considered at the forefront of family law, even by those who actually practice in the area.
She is more likely than not a politically correct appointment to make the numbers for the sheilas.
Her appointment is in the same genre in that regard as Kate Davenport, whom I distinctinctly recall the Attorney-General describing publically as an “outstanding candidate”. He has never had her an an opponent.
The reality of the Cook Islands Privy Council appeal that Kate handled is that a couple of locals were arguing over a boundary so, all the depth and difficulty of a dispute under the Dividing Fences Act.
Mark O’Brien
It is a per se qualification to becoming a High Court judge to be a partner in a large law firm. That is the base structure and foundation of the judiciary and indeed, how it was originally established. it is now entrenched ii the thinking of the legal profession: that is beyond question.
So in the Supreme Court we now have two judges who have never appeared in court prior to their appointment to the bench (except for the occasion of their admission).
The preponderance of the Judges are from large law firms, many of whom are appointed directly. There are, for example, the Chappers – Forrest Gump and Justice Mark O’Regan and many others in the High Court.
It is difficult to know what Justice Mark O’Regan actually did at Chappers, his biography is bery brief. He started in the late 1970s and remained until becoming a judge. He did some kind of commercial-type work, so presumably wrote opinions and did some transactional work. There would be plenty of lawyers that would have the same experience as him you might think, including his undoubted abilities as a lawyer.
I have appeared before him. A good lawyer, sure. But more?
But, parking the Judges with a criminal law background, the rest of them at one time in the working career spent a degree of time at a large law firm.
More than most of them would have been partners for most of their career before a brief spot at the bar and then bench; three examples of that are Justices Alan McKenzie, Tony Randerson and Robert Dobson.
The latter two were at the bar may be for five years. Justice Kos is similar.
All spent most of the career in their firms.
Two recent women examples are Mary Peters (most at Russell) and Rebecca Edwards (mostly at Russell, and nope never heard of her before she was made a Judge). Jutice Katz is an example of making a female a High Court Judge straight from a large law firm (Russell) since it is the place candidates are predominantly drawn from. There is a South Island analogy of Dunningham. I am not sure what firm she is from however. The other factor about the South Island that one must never forget is that everyone is related.
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