Legal Systems: Rule of Law

Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe (CB)]

My Lords, as a footnote to several of the eloquent speeches your Lordships have heard, may I mention one aspect of our legal arrangements which is not perhaps well known but makes a significant contribution to the rule of law and, incidentally, to the standing of this country? It is the participation by the Bar of England and Wales, and to a limited extent the judiciary, in the training of young lawyers, both here and overseas, in the art or craft of advocacy. This important work is undertaken entirely on a voluntary basis and without remuneration. I declare an interest as I am a patron—with the Chief Justice of Hong Kong and Justice Kiefel of the High Court of Australia—of the International Advocacy Training Council, which I will mention towards the end of my speech.

I begin with a little history. For hundreds of years, the training of young advocates was entirely in the hands of the judges and the Bar. It was a thoroughly hands-on training. The students spent the day in court listening to the arguments and judgments. They lived in the Inns of Court, where they discussed points of law and listened to their elders and betters discussing points of law. That went on until about the middle of the 17th century, when, for a variety of reasons, there was a sad and steep decline. Legal education in the Inns of Court became formulaic, perfunctory and basically useless.

I am glad to say that that decline has now been decisively reversed. The Inns of Court—all of them—accept that their primary function is as centres of legal education. The Inns and the circuits—the other bit of the Bar’s infrastructure—work to supplement and continue the learning given to students in the university law schools and the Bar’s professional training course, especially in the fields of practical advocacy and professional ethics. They are able to do that only because a large number of practitioners, including some of the busiest practitioners and judges, are prepared to give something back.

I would be delighted to tell the House more about the methods and techniques that we use—groups of six students, usually with one or two trainers—but I fear that it would take up too much time. I will say only that the instruction is intensely practical; it is largely at an elementary level because we are dealing with beginners—and with them one is concerned with the elements, not the niceties, of advocacy. There are, however, much more advanced courses. The most outstanding course, of which at least my legal colleagues will be well aware, is the week-long advanced advocacy course held every year at Keble College, Oxford, which goes on to more advanced matters, including appellate advocacy, and the important topics of handling vulnerable witnesses and expert witnesses. The courses at Keble are regularly attended by numerous students and trainers from overseas, and the Inns of Court have, to an increasing extent over the past 10 years or so, either singly or in combination, sent parties of trainers to other territories in order to pass on the system to them—to train trainers, as it were. They have been frequently to Hong Kong, Malaysia, different parts of the Caribbean, Mauritius and elsewhere.

About four years ago at Keble, the international Advocacy Training Council was launched—primarily an initiative of the English Bar, but readily and warmly supported by judges and advocates in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and South Africa. In fact, the annual gathering for advocacy training at Stellenbosch is probably the only serious competitor of Keble for being the top world event in advocacy training.

The demand for advocacy training exceeds supply. Some Bars, such as those of Hong Kong and Malaysia, are very prosperous and can afford to pay some or all of the expenses of visiting teams. Other jurisdictions are less well off; and the visiting teams have to pay their own way there, as well as give their services free of charge. But it is striking how, wherever they go, the experience is one of huge gratitude for the help and encouragement given to the local Bar, nowhere more so than in Zimbabwe, where a team visited last year—probably the most testing task that they have undertaken, having received no support at all from the Government of Zimbabwe—but with great success.

In short, advocacy training has become for this country an invisible export, freely bestowed and enormously appreciated by the recipients. It is something of which we can be very proud.