All the Queen's horses

The Wyles One touting new numbers favouring QC option for Yarraside bar ... Five percent speak ... Sydney barrister Greg Curtin issues bar election manifesto: solicitors can be bad for the administration of justice  

More QCs for Yarraside: lots of wind

Melbourne's Michael Wyles SC is claiming a "significant response" to his campaign to inflict more Queens Counsel on the Yarraside bar. 

He argues that the SC brand hasn't "caught on" and that Vic's SCs will lose traffic to the fluffed-up Queensland QCs. 

He conducted an informal poll of Vic's senior counsel, about 138 in all. 

He has come up with some fresh stats: 

• 115 responded; 
• 99 support a choice being offered - SC or QC; 
• 100 support a choice if he includes himself; 
• 4 are "neutral" - i.e. they will do whatever everyone else decides;
• 11 oppose any choice being offered. 

The numbers are a little difficult to track, because in May this year Wiles was reporting that 27 SCs were opposed to the idea. Now it's only 11 opposed to having a "choice". 

In any event, he wants the bar council to "act". 

"On issues considered by its members to be important, the Bar Council should act in accordance with its members' wishes.

This issue is important enough for 115 busy silks to have taken the time to consider the issue and notify their view on it."

It would have been instructive if the Wyles One had extended his survey to the 105 or so Queens Counsel at Vic's Bar 'n' Grill. 

Do they want another 100 QCs on their patch? What about the rank-and-file of 1,689 non-silked members? What do they think? 

Surely this is not just a matter for five percent of Yarraside's barristers. 

The important thing is that Michael Wiles wants to be a Queens Counsel. 

The incoming bar council is going to be pestered until they ask the attorney general to get onboard. 

*   *   *

It's bar election time and NSW contender Greg Curtin SC is fast out of the blocks with another tilt for a spot on the inner sanctum. 

He's issued to the rank and file a two page letter plus his six page paper, rejected for publication by the Law Society Journal. 

If elected Greg promises to press the bar council to take "bold, vocal and public steps (including advertising)" to impress on solicitors and institutional litigants the benefit, both "forensically and financially" of using junior barristers. 

Curtin is tapping into the anxiety of many barristers about the increasing inroads into their trade by upstart solicitors. 

In an ideal world, the bar would like its skills in advice, evidence and advocacy to be exclusively reserved for its members. 

Curtin puts it this way: 

"Whilst solicitors are very good (a matter I emphasise) at matters within their speciality as solicitors, they are less proficient at matters within barristers' specialities for the obvious reason that they lack barristers' experience, training and study in matters such as evidence and advocacy." 

The result is that solicitors stuff things up leading to "higher legal costs and poorer results for litigants". 

"It can also be detrimental to the due administration of justice." 

With that in mind, litigants need to be reminded that barristers are better and cheaper - "if not in the short term, then certainly in the long term". 

Curtain agitated for reform of the silk selection protocol in 2009 and he was on the bar council for the 2010 season. 

He also reviewed the "reformed" SC system following the Gyles recommendations. Justinian published his paper here.   

Greg signs-off his most recent election missive saying: 

"In a very real sense, and this is how I view it, your votes are for the views I have expressed rather than for me as an individual."