Briefcase: The last legal taboo, social media, southern pride and more

Is this the last legal taboo?
Bullying, in one form or another, is all the rage it seems. Justice Minister Judith Collins is the Minister of Bullying and she has of late focused on cyber bullying, which is also all the rage.

However, one of the issues that has established itself firmly as a major contributor to lawyer depression and suicide is judicial bullying. It may sound odd, weird or even untrue but it's here. And former Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby, the judicial rock star who goes on tour just like real rock stars, was in Dunedin three weeks ago talking to law students about the major issue of lawyer suicide and depression, often stemming from judicial bullying. 

In fact, he was sponsored to talk about a pet topic – animal rights, no pun intended – but the suicide and depression issue is one he is focused on.

One of the reasons for the increased interest in Australia results from Director of Public Prosecutions Lloyd Babb writing a memo to staff warning them to stop bullying one another, which seems somewhat odd you might think, and requiring victims to report all incidents so the DPP can take disciplinary action.

What has prompted the memo and the intense interest of people like Mr Kirby is the fact that more lawyers than ever are committing suicide, including two from the DPP in the past six months and with almost one third of all DPP staff indicating they had been the victims of bullying.

High profile Sydney barrister Christopher Branson QC, an Oxford graduate who studied with former US president Bill Clinton, died this month after leaping to his death. This, rather akin to the death of Greg King, shocked many lawyers and others who re-examined the stress involved in advocacy and related issues.

The New Zealand Law Society, slow to respond to an increasing issue of lawyer depression, has taken steps to deal with issue. Bullying by the judiciary, which is a part of this, relates only to a small minority of judges at any one time.

The role played by Mr Kirby has been well received by many, including New South Wales Chief Justice Tom Bathurst and senior prosecutors, one of whom, Mark Tedeschi SC, says belittling by judges is the greatest stress-source for many lawyers, in the DPP or elsewhere. He speaks of lawyers returning from court in tears wondering how they could face another day before a particular judge.

The issue for advocates anywhere, particularly in criminal law where there can be highly distasteful and disturbing cases and clients, is that they are dealing daily with arguments, objections and frequently strident opposition on all fronts. Having a bullying judge as well can amount to a bridge too far.

Depression is an issue facing appropriate scrutiny within the profession. But the issue of judicial bullying raised by Mr Kirby with law students in Dunedin is something that needs to be elevated to the senior echelon of the profession, too.

A-Twitter over social media
The Law Commission, via new chum Commissioner Judge Peter Boshier, has announced its investigation of contempt of court issues, focused on the role being played with increasing frequency by social media. The commission is focused on preserving the fairness and requirements of justice in the face of the bloggers, citizen journalists and iPhone crazies like the man who handled the running shot of one of Jesse Ryder's alleged attackers.

The genie, the commission must know, is out of the bottle. Social media's "involvement" in the administration of justice is well and truly ensconsced via the internet and, in case this had been overlooked, Attorney General Chris Finlayson commissioned a report into contempt of court issues that was delivered exactly two years ago. Nothing further happened.

The 2011 report, authored by Victoria University Dean Tony Smith, also an "honourary bencher at the Middle Temple" in case you care, postulated two choices to the role of social media. The first is to acknowledge that by trying to control what occurs on the "blogosphere" is "attempting to do the impossible." In other words, just go with it. The other is to require what the professor calls "problematic material" to be taken down. 

Let's see what the Law Commission has to say.

Pride of the South*
The institutional presumption that only Auckland and Victoria universities offer pedigree law degrees has been shattered this week with news that  three soon-to-be Otago graduates have been offered positions as judges clerks to the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Sian Elias, and with the Court of Appeal.

All three were destined for corporate law jobs at one firm, believed to have been Russell McVeagh, which will be doubtless disappointed but chuffed enough to know its selection process has passed muster with the senior levels of the judiciary.

Coinciding with the good news for the students is good news for the faculty, which on the same day ranked first in the country in the most recent Performance Based Research Fund assessment. This relates to the quality of research performance by academic and research staff in the subject area of law. Dean of Law Mark Henaghan cites the ranking as a good opportunity to “influence law reform through our publications.”

Love a lawyer
Lawyer love is not something that frequently springs to mind among the general populace. But among the proliferation of special days to commemorate virtually everything known to man and everyone with something “special,” last month has been “Hug a Lawyer Day,” which  you should note as March 24 in your calendar. And on April 9 there was “Be Kind to Lawyers Day,” which is evidently a day when it would be inappropriate to crack lawyer jokes but thoroughly appropriate to use lawyer talk, for example, “let’s adjourn to the pub” or, better still, to spend money with one.

John Bowie is publisher of LawFuel

* Response by Law Faculty, Victoria University of Wellington
Stating that University of Otago is “The No 1 Law School in the country” is misleading. It is true that Otago is No 1 in one category of the PBRF, that of “Law by Subject.” The figures cited are taken from Table A24 of the TEC Report. They are accurate, but they do not purport to measure relativities between faculties as is asserted. A number of people whose work is analysed in that table are not members of the Victoria Law Faculty at all but teach and research elsewhere in the uuniversity, so the conclusion is therefore inaccurate. Table A24 is not measuring and comparing individual law schools and it simply cannot be used to compare them.
 
The more relevant assessment is that which compares every faculty with the others in the country, which is to be found in the “Nominated Academic Unit." In this, Victoria is placed marginally ahead of Otago at 6.4 to Otago’s 6.3. The Faculty by Faculty (or School by School) analysis and assessment appears in the Tables A64-A69 of the PBRF Report and it is the figures taken from that source (Table 68A for VUW) that were used by the Law Society in compiling the table below. There is no doubt that they demonstrate that Victoria and not Otago is the leading Law School.