Now . . Let’s Guess Who Might Be QC This Time

By Rumpoled – I don’t know anyone who is applying for the QC badge this year, but I can guess plenty who will.

There will of course be the perennial applicants who routinely apply.

One who is deserved is Sandra Grant who is certainly good enough to be appointed but will not be because of her drink driving episode, and to be fair, it wasn’t even a high score and shouldn’t hold back an appointment, but it doubtless will.

Then there is her husband, Anthony Grant, who will never be appointed not because he has no personality, but because he wrote articles criticising the Supreme Court on their decisions in trust cases.

The Superiors do not mind articles about their decisions so long as

they are laudatory.

Next, Paul Dale springs to mind, hellofa nice bloke.  Will he, though?

Some applicants will be criticised on the “Knowlege of law” basis.”  Knowledge of the law as an actual criteria for appointment applies, except when it does not. It is very important to understand how selection criteria is applied.

There are others who if they were going to be appointed would have by now, the also ran club.

Then, there are the exalted ones; those, whose appointment is beyond doubt and question, the axiomatic appointments.

This is the category of those now at the bar who were formerly, (and it can be as recent as only last week) in one of the big National law firms.

It is also important to appreciate that of them, three are consider even better than the rest if that is possible. I know it is a stretcher, a bit like imaginary numbers (a tricky mathematical concept).

Now, here I have to announce the dead set shoe in: – he is from Chapman Tripp (think two Judges in the Supreme Court, one in the Court of Appeal, and a veritable smorgasbord of mensa quality intellect).

He was in the litigation department (so, as a plus he must been to court and done a trial); he has been at the bar about two years, he recently lectured on cross examination even though he may well never have actually done it a few times.

And he is known to everyone that matters including the Chief Justice [I have personal knowledge of this because I was once at a conference (yep, true) and she referred to him by name when she asked him to turn a light switch on].

He is – Adam Ross.

That is the only dead cert I know of this year.

If I look through the list I might see some more names. But, fundamentally, anyone from a large firm is well ahead of the pack for appointment.

In the women stakes: – Jane Anderson – I have mentioned her before, she is in Shortland Chambers.

There are no other women at the bar I can think of who have no already been appointed, apart from people at the bar who are, and might get appointed based on genitalia criteria alone.

In the well-chosen-parents stakes, there are a couple: – Andrew Barker son of Sir Ian Barker, and son of Greg Blanchard.

In the capital there are of course those who have presumably thrown in the rag – who knows?.  There is criminal lawyer Gary Turkington, the man who recently repped David Ross, and the experienced Richard Laurenson, brother of Justice John, who you might have thought would be well past their apply-by dates.

Then there is Jerry Collins’ former manager and lawyer Tim Castle, a Waitangi Tribunalist who may well have clashed with the Attorney General on vexed native issues.

Any chance for any of them this time?  The real question is whether they have bothered to apply – again.

Since I think it is known I do not apply, I am in the category of a shunned Amish; on the upside, no one has tried to cut my beard yet.

Time will tell.  Now is the time to speculate, however.