Page 3955 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 October 1991
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I believe that the profession in this Territory should give a lead, since we are city-state size and have the homogeneity to start to develop the concept of a different type of practising lawyer. Many corporate lawyers never go to court. They are not advocates. They are not people who fit the traditional mould of lawyers. You will never see them in court - or rarely, if ever. They have practising colleagues and partners who often take care of other parts of issues that come up in their corporate management.
I believe that it is time that the profession started to, in effect, mount a charge on those issues and reform itself so that the public clearly understands that a lawyer stands there only to assist the court, in the traditional mould. He or she goes there to affect a cause and, as Ben Jonson wrote, to support that cause to the best of his or her ability, not to take the cause on as his or her own. There is a profound difference in those issues.
Those values should apply at prosecution level particularly. Prosecutors should be there to elucidate the facts, to press the Crown charge and to bring about justice; but should not be there to secure a conviction at all costs and to represent and to form the idea that that occupation is dedicated towards the role of punishment in society. That lies elsewhere. It lies with the judiciary. I think that there is at times a prosecution attitude that suggests that prosecutors are there to do the cleaning up job in society. That is wrong. They are there to do the forensic legal services. They are there to prepare the cases and support the court.
I am pleased to have this opportunity, two days after I have resecured my practising certificate, to say that those issues are properly matters that we should remind ourselves and the profession of.
MR STEFANIAK (4.16): Firstly, I congratulate, I suppose, my colleague Mr Collaery on resecuring his practising certificate. Perhaps that is why he went into some detail in relation to what is basically a very simple and technical amendment to the Legal Practitioners Act and one which is consequential, in fact, to the second order of the day, the Government Solicitor (Amendment) Bill. This particular amendment merely omits the definition of "Government Law Office" and inserts the definition of "relevant administrative unit" to enable the Chief Minister to allocate responsibilities for the Government Solicitor Act 1989 and call the unit what he or she desires to call it.
So, it is just a technical amendment. I will say no more in relation to the Government Solicitor (Amendment) Bill, although I am tempted to make a few comments as a result of my friend Mr Collaery's learned dissertations on legal practitioners, prosecutors and God knows what else.
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