Profession must also be responsible for access to justice: Neuberger
Legal professionals, as well as government, must share responsibility for ensuring access to justice, by keeping costs "commensurate" with what is at stake in a case, according to the President of the UK Supreme Court.
Delivering the final keynote speech at the World Bar Conference in Edinburgh at the weekend, Lord Neuberger said he was not criticising the high earnings of some members of the profession, albeit a minority: "If we are to have a first class legal profession, we need some of the most able young people to become practising lawyers, and it is naïve to expect many able young people to become barristers if the financial rewards are paltry, although I must add, expressing my great admiration, that a few of the most able young people are socially committed enough to enter the less well paid areas of the law."
But while calls on the UK Government not to shrink the legal aid budget further had "obvious, and some might say urgent, force", he added: "I have no doubt that the rewards of the job of being a well paid and successful advocate, particularly when taken together with the constitutional responsibilities which that role carries, mean that advocates, and indeed all members of the legal profession, have to do all they can to ensure that access to justice is not just a slogan but a reality. Ensuring that problems and cases are dealt with in a genuinely proportionate way, so that costs are commensurate with the amount or issues at stake is the ultimate aim, and it is one to which everyone, not least advocates, must strive."
Lord Neuberger presented shortage of money as one of the big issues in many countries to confront the rule of law in general, and access to legal advice in particular. "And in the long run it could risk undermining public confidence in the rule of law", he added, warning of the dangers of taking the rule of law for granted.
However current economic pressures did "make us question many of our cosy assumptions and practices, which is no bad thing".
The judge also emphasised the importance and interdependence of an independent legal profession and an independent judiciary, and the advantages of "a late-entry judiciary consisting mostly of people who have been practising lawyers", while accepting that recruiting from other backgrounds, and indeed an element of early entry career judiciary, might improve diversity.
He maintained that legal systems with a tradition of oral advocacy do produce a high quality of advocate, recalling his experience of observing a "soporific" hearing before the Court of Justice of the European Union where the advocates simply read out submissions, with minimal questioning from the bench, and some judges had been quite "shocked" afterwards when he contrasted the British approach.
Lord Neuberger also addressed the challenges posed by technology, but concluded: "The essential fact remains that the notion that an independent high quality professional advocacy profession is fundamental to the rule of law is as true as it ever was. Indeed, in our complex, global, fast changing society it is more true than it ever was."