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Home , Bar of Ireland, Bar of Northern Ireland, Call to the bar, Edgar Graham

The independent of Northern – Past and Present1

Sir Anthony Hart

It is a pleasure and a privilege to have been invited to speak to the Wales & Chester Circuit about the Bar. It was suggested that I might say something about the nature of practice in Northern Ireland, but before doing so I would like to say a little about the history of the Northern Ireland Bar because that has had a great bearing on the way we operate. I say ‘we’ because I was called to the Northern Ireland Bar in September 1969, and although I was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn in 1975, practised exclusively in Northern

Ireland before I became a in 1985. So for the greater part of my professional life my experience has been of observing the Northern Ireland Bar in action as a practitioner and as a judge.

Northern Ireland is the smallest part of the United Kingdom, covering 5,356 square miles with a population of 1.682 million, compared to Wales which covers an area of 8,030 square miles and a population of just under 3.1 million people.2 The Northern Ireland Bar is the smallest, and notionally the youngest, of the three independent Bars that form part of the legal system of the United Kingdom. Although it came into existence as a separate Bar in

October 1921 when the provisions of the Government of Ireland Act of 1920 relating to the judicial system of the new Northern Ireland came into force, it sprang from the pre-partition

Irish Bar, and to the present day reflects some of the unique characteristics of the Irish Bar as it was before 1921. I feel it is therefore appropriate to give a history of the Irish Bar

1 An address to the Wales & Chester Circuit in Cardiff, 22 June, 2017. 2 The figures for the geographical areas of Northern Ireland and Wales have been taken from www.worldatlas.com. The population figures have been taken from www.nisra.gov.uk/publications and www.gov.wales/statistics, in both cases from the mid-year estimates for 2015.

1 before 1921 to explain some of the unusual features of the Northern Ireland Bar when viewed from this side of the Irish Sea.

Sadly there are many gaps in the legal history of Ireland because comparatively few records have survived, due initially to the carelessness with which records were stored, and subsequently to the loss of most of those that did survive when the Public Record Office of

Ireland was destroyed in the Irish Civil War in 1922. We know that the Irish Bar can trace its roots back to the earliest days of the in Ireland. What has been aptly described as the ‘first adventure of the common law’3 came about as a consequence of the arrival in

Ireland in August 1170 of Richard de Clare, earl of Pembroke, better known as Strongbow, whose lands were situated around Chepstow in what was then Monmouthshire and is now

Gwent. In October 1171 Strongbow was followed by Henry II, and these events laid the foundations of the establishment of English power in Ireland, although it was not until the final years of the reign of Elizabeth I that had complete control over the entire island. Between 1290 and 1320 the forerunners of the professional of today were appearing on behalf of clients in royal and local courts throughout those parts of Ireland that were under royal control in what was then termed ‘The lordship of Ireland’.4 By then the profession had split into two branches, pleaders and attorneys, and the pleaders would, on occasion, travel to appear before the royal and other courts at many different locations. Some at least of those who practised law in the lordship during the next three centuries received training in London,5 indeed the first person known to be a student of the common law in either England or Ireland was one Robert St Michael of Ireland who was given permission in

3 W.J. Johnston, ‘The first adventure of the Common Law’, LQR xxxvi (1920), 11. 4 P. Brand, ‘The early history of the legal profession of the lordship of Ireland, 1250-1350’ in D. Hogan and W.N. Osborough (eds.), Brehon, serjeants and attorneys: studies in the history of the Irish Legal profession, Dublin, 1990), pp 37-41. 5 See A.R. Hart, A history of the Bar and Inn of Court of Northern Ireland, (, 2013), Ch. 1 for a discussion of this topic.

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1287 to stay at Westminster ‘for the purpose of learning in the Bench’6, that is studying in court.

In 1541 Henry VIII decreed that henceforth Ireland was to be regarded as a kingdom and not a mere lordship, and that year saw the foundation of King’s Inns, the Irish inn of court.

Although King’s Inns was responsible for admitting both and attorneys to practise, this did not result in King’s Inns educating students for the Irish Bar, because in 1542 the

Irish parliament enacted a statute that stipulated that any person who wished to act as a pleader in any of the ‘King’s four principal courts’ (i.e. chancery, king’s bench, common pleas and exchequer) had to have resided and studied at one of the in London, and this requirement remained in force until 1885.7

Until the Government of Ireland Act 1920 Ireland had its own parliament, with the exception of the period between the Act of Union of 1800 and the Government of Ireland Act, although even during that period Ireland remained a separate jurisdiction with its own courts and legal profession. Our Judicature Act of 1877 remodelled the Irish superior courts in the same way as happened in England and Wales in 1875, with the result that in Ireland in 1921 there was a with King’s Bench and Chancery divisions, and a court of appeal with a right of appeal to the judicial committee of the House of Lords. Indeed, in 1921 two of the five lords of appeal in ordinary had been members of the Irish Bar, Lord Atkinson and Lord Carson of

Duncairn, the latter having made his name at the Irish Bar and as general for Ireland, before moving to practise at the English Bar when he became one of the leading advocates of the day, and a leading political figure in both Ireland and England.

6 Brand, ‘The legal profession of Ireland’, p. 25. 7 The text of the statute is discussed in detail in C. Kenny, King’s Inns and the Kingdom of Ireland: the ‘Irish Inn of Court, 1541-1800 (Dublin, 1992), pp 41-46.

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As well as the high court, there were also assize courts which went on circuit twice a year exercising both criminal and civil jurisdictions. One significant difference between our respective jurisdictions relates to appeals from the county court. In Ireland these lay to the assize judge and took the form of a complete rehearing before a high court judge, and that remains the position today. Although the concept of a rehearing when both sides can call new witnesses if they wish may seem illogical, it is cheap, speedy and works well in practice. It also survives in the . An appeal from the county court (or from the high court judge on appeal) on a point of law by way of a case stated in Northern Ireland also lies to the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland. Below these superior courts there were county courts exercising a civil jurisdiction, and courts of quarter sessions exercising a criminal jurisdiction, although, unlike the general practice in England and Wales, the county court in Ireland presided over both courts.8 The courts of petty sessions were presided over by salaried resident magistrates, most, but not all, of whom were legally qualified by 1921.

Justices of the peace still sat in petty sessions on occasion, but less frequently than their counterparts in England and Wales. With the exception of land law, by 1921 Irish law was in large measure identical to , whether it took the form of statutes passed by the pre-

1800 Irish parliament, or by the United Kingdom parliament between 1800 and 1921. Irish courts applied the English common law and rarely departed from decisions of their English counterparts.

By the time of the Act of Union of 1800, the Irish Bar had been long established, and occupied a position of great importance in the political and social life of the country. It has been estimated that of the 300 members of the Irish House of Commons at the time of the Act of Union, 67 were barristers, of whom 42 were in active practice,9 and many of the leading

8 Hart, A history of the Bar and Inn of Court of Northern Ireland, pp 77, 228, 260, 272 and 446. 9 G.C. Bolton, The passing of the Irish Act of Union: a study in parliamentary politics, (Oxford, 1966), pp 80- 81.

4 political figures in the Irish Commons were barristers.10 The Irish lord chancellor, John

Mitford, the first Lord Redesdale, an English who came to Ireland to fill the post of lord chancellor of Ireland,11 wrote in 1805 that ‘There is no body in Ireland which has so much influence in public opinion as the bar’.12 During the nineteenth century the Irish Bar grew in size to almost 700 by 1850, although numbers shrank to about 427 or so by the end of the century. There was a slight increase to 447 in 1910, but a dramatic fall to 330 by 1920.13

As in England and Wales, Ireland was divided into circuits, and by 1921 there were five circuits, the Munster, Leinster, Connaught, North West and North East. Between them the

North West and the North East Circuits covered twelve of the thirty two Irish counties. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the circuits were central to life at the Irish Bar, with their own rules and customs, and although there was some falling off in their significance with the coming of the railways in the nineteenth century because it was easier to remain in

Dublin and go to a single assize town, whether for the whole assize or to hold one or two briefs. Nevertheless circuit life was of the utmost importance in creating a feeling of camaraderie, professional standards and esprit de corps.

Until the end of the Victorian era there was little in the way of local bars in any of the cities outside Dublin, although with the rapid industrial expansion of Belfast and the surrounding parts of the North East in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the North East Circuit grew until by 1910 it was much the largest of the five circuits, with 112 members, of whom seventeen were silks.14 During the same period a significant local bar emerged in Belfast, and

10 Hart, A history of the Bar and Inn of Court of Northern Ireland, p. 31. 11 F.E. Ball, The judges in Ireland, 1221-1921 (London, 1926), ii, pp. 334-335. Redesdale was an ancestor of the author Nancy Mitford and her siblings. 12 Quoted, A.R. Hart, A history of the king’s serjeants at law in Ireland: honour rather than advantage, (Dublin, 2000), pp 9-10. 13 Hart, A history of the Bar and Inn of Court of Northern Ireland, pp 41-44. 14 Ibid., pp 72.

5 by 1919 there were 16 barristers with chambers’ addresses in Belfast, something that was to prove highly significant in the next decade.15

The crucial distinction between the Northern Ireland Bar and its counterpart in England and

Wales remains the Library system. Before James Gandon’s magnificent were constructed on the banks of the River Liffey in Dublin at the end of the eighteenth century members of the Irish Bar seem to have operated from their homes when they were not in court or on circuit. Although the new Four Courts building initially contained no accommodation for barristers apart from a robing room in the cellars which were ‘dark, cold and had a predilection to flooding’,16 by 1813 a small room in the building was being used as a library of legal works provided by one Valentine Delaney. In 1816 the subscribers to the library formed a committee which purchased the books from Delaney and employed him as the librarian. The numbers of subscribers rose to over 600 by 1840, and in 1838 a new library had been built when the courts were extended. The Law Library as it was known was replaced with an enlarged building in 1897, which was later rebuilt after the Four Courts were destroyed in 1922.17 The Law Library consisted of tables at which members of the Library sat and worked during the day when they were not in court or on circuit. Their briefs and brief bags were collected each evening and taken to their homes in what was called the “Legal

Express”. The next morning they were collected and returned to the Law Library. In his The

Life of Lord Carson Edward Marjoribanks said ‘the place seemed more like pandemonium than a place to work’, but a member of the Library soon learned to hear nothing in the noisy room but his own name.18 When a solicitor came to the door he asked for his counsel whose name would then be called out by the attendant, or the solicitor would be directed to the court

15 Ibid., pp 63-64. 16 T. Clancy, ‘The Four Courts building and the development of an independent ’, in C. Costello (ed.) The Four Courts: 200 years (Dublin, 1996), p. 94. 17 Hart, A history of the Bar and Inn of Court of Northern Ireland, pp 36-47. 18 E. Marjoribanks, The life of Lord Carson, (London, 1932), i, pp 20-21.

6 where counsel might be found. The same system prevailed in the Bar Library in the Law

Courts in Belfast when I was called in 1969. Today the receptionist will call counsel on his or her desk phone and send counsel a text saying that the solicitor is waiting, although in most cases the solicitor will text counsel direct, but in principle the system is the same.

When the new courts opened in Northern Ireland on Wednesday 26 October 1921 the seven silks and fourteen juniors who gathered under the chairmanship of the attorney general of

Northern Ireland appointed a committee whose remit was naturally to recreate the physical conditions and services barristers had enjoyed in Dublin. Time does not permit me to describe in detail the problems concerning the construction of the new courts and facilities for the Bar that followed. It was not until 1933 that the new Law Courts, and the dedicated Bar

Library which was contained in that building, were complete. The Bar moved into modern facilities that replicated those that they had enjoyed in Dublin, and each had a desk in the Library.

However, although it may seem a natural step for the Library system to be recreated in

Belfast, that was by no means a foregone conclusion at the time. Those members of the former North East Circuit who had chambers in Belfast continued to occupy them for some years after 1921. In 1923 there was a debate on a resolution that said that ‘the chamber is contrary to the traditions and against the best interests of the Irish Bar’ and called on members of the Northern Ireland Bar who held tenancies of chambers to surrender them. It would seem that opinion within the Bar was very evenly divided over the issue, and although the matter does not appear to have been pressed to a vote, the rejection of the chamber system came to pass. Then number of barristers with chambers gradually declined, and by 1933 only one member of the Bar had chambers when the Bar moved en bloc into the new Bar Library.

Had a significant proportion of the practising Northern Ireland Bar continued in chambers after 1933, this would undoubtedly had a severe and detrimental impact upon the cohesion,

7 collegiality and spirit of fellowship of the Northern Ireland Bar. The Library system has proved to be of crucial importance in developing and maintaining its ethos and effectiveness, particularly when the Bar faced the challenges associated with the extreme violence and political unrest that afflicted Northern Ireland for several decades from 1969 onwards, and the very different challenges brought about by the rapid increase in size of the Bar during the same period.

I will return to subject of the Bar Library, but at this point I want to say something about how

Bar students are trained in Northern Ireland because professional education at the present day is another area where there are important differences between the and the Bars elsewhere in the United Kingdom, although this was not originally the case. By 1926 the strains created by the existence of two distinct political entities on the island of Ireland led to the rejection by the Northern Ireland Bar and judiciary of a continuing role for King’s Inns in Dublin over the Bar in Northern Ireland. In January 1926 a joint meeting of the judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Northern Ireland and of the Bar led to the foundation of a separate Inn of Court of Northern Ireland. The new Inn assumed responsibility for the education of Bar students and their call to the Bar.19 Given the small numbers of students, arrangements were made with The Queen’s University of Belfast for Bar students to attend courses in the Law Faculty of the University. An arrangement was also made with the

Council of Legal Education in London for Northern Ireland students to be admitted to one of the Inns of Court in London and to take Part II of the Bar Final in London. On passing the

Bar Final they would then be called to the Northern Ireland Bar. These arrangements remained in place largely unaltered for almost half a century, and still applied when I became a student of the Inn of Court of Northern Ireland in September 1968, having studied law at

Trinity College, Dublin in the Republic of Ireland.

19 See Hart, A history of the Bar and Inn of Court of Northern Ireland, Ch. 4.

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The changes in the Bar Final in London in the early 1970s brought about as a result of the

Report of the Ormrod Committee led the of the Inn of Court of Northern Ireland to review their educational requirements and arrangements. After a short period when Bar students at Queen’s University were taught various vocational courses by practising barristers, following a review of professional legal education by a committee set up by the

Northern Ireland government and chaired by Professor Armitage,20 an Institute of

Professional Legal Studies was set up. The Institute was part of Queen’s University but governed by the Council of Legal Education (Northern Ireland). The Council is an independent body with members drawn from the judiciary, the university and both branches of the legal profession.

The Institute was unique at that time in the British Isles as it is based on the principle of vocational training for both barristers and being provided in a single institution.

Although it was initially funded by government, for a considerable number of years it has charged fees so that it is financially self supporting. Whilst the concept of joint professional education has not been without its critics, and the detailed working of the Institute has been reviewed and revised from time to time over the past four decades, it is a tribute to the soundness of the basic concept of barristers and solicitors receiving the major part of their professional vocational training together in a small jurisdiction like ours that the Institute is still operating, and will be 40 years old this September.

Of course pre-call training is not the only form of professional training for the Bar, and post- call , and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) thereafter, both have an essential part to play. Pupillage can only be served with a member of the Bar in independent practice, and lasts for twelve months. During the first three months the newly called barrister

20 Ibid., Chapter 6. Professor Armitage was vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester, and a distinguished academic lawyer who had been a member of the Ormrod Committee.

9 cannot appear in court or take instructions, and for the second three months he or she may only appear in front of a master to deal with interlocutory matters. After the six months has elapsed, then provided that the pupil master certifies that the pupil has performed satisfactorily, the pupil can appear in court without any restrictions. During pupillage advocacy training provided by senior members of the Bar in areas such as criminal and family law is compulsory.

The need for continuing education or training after pupillage had been recognised by the

Armitage Committee in 1973, but it was not until September 2004 that continuing professional development became compulsory. The does not provide courses, but practitioners are required to identify suitable courses provided by various bodies approved by the Bar Council, and a failure to complete a minimum of twelve hours CPD each year can result in disciplinary proceedings being taken against the barrister concerned, and that has happened in a small number of cases.

The Northern Ireland Bar has faced, and successfully weathered, some very difficult times in the last 45 years. The decades of extreme violence did not leave it untouched. Five members of the judiciary, all former members of the Bar, were murdered, and Edgar Graham, a barrister and lecturer at Queen’s University and a Unionist member of the Northern Ireland

Assembly, was murdered as he left the Law Faculty building at Queen’s University. Others escaped assassination or had their homes destroyed in terrorist attacks. Yet, despite the deep political and community divisions in Northern Ireland during that time, the Bar was able to remain united in serving the administration of justice, and this was undoubtedly due to the personal friendships and professional esprit de corps fostered by the camaraderie of the Bar

Library.

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The continuing violence was not the only factor that brought about pressure on the Bar

Library, because the enormous growth in the size of the Bar during the same period placed a great strain on the Library concept, and at times threatened the continuation of the very idea of a common physical base for the entire Bar.

Although the Government of Ireland Act provided that existing members of the Irish Bar could continue to practise in both Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland,21 thereafter there were two separate Bars in Ireland, and by 1926 there were between 60 and 70 barristers who regarded themselves as permanently practicing in Northern Ireland. During the next 40 years the numbers in practice remained reasonably constant, although there were some fluctuations, with the largest number of practitioners during that period being reached in 1956 when the membership list of the Circuit for the Spring Assizes contained 70 members and two probationers.22 However, the numbers dropped during the 1960s as promotions to the bench and retirements outnumbered calls to the Bar, and when I was called in September 1969 there were only 61 members of the Bar Library, twenty two silks and thirty nine juniors, compared to rather more than 500 solicitors. With a large call in 1970 numbers increased dramatically, a pattern that has continued every year since, until by 2010 there were 610 members of the

Bar Library, 69 silks and 562 juniors.23

As the numbers in the Bar Library grew, so did the pressure on space. With considerable difficulty additional space was found in the Law Courts to allow the Bar Library to expand on two occasions, but the continued increase in numbers meant that the increased space was soon inadequate. The serious overcrowding, and dissatisfaction with the inadequate facilities, led to considerable discussion within the Bar in the mid 1990s as to the best way forward, and after much debate this led to a decision in April 1997 to build a new Bar Library. This was

21 Sch. 7, paragraph 4. 22 Hart, A history of the Bar and Inn of Court of Northern Ireland, pp 180-183, 217-218. 23 Ibid., pp 291-292.

11 completed by Easter 2003. The building comprises 120,000 square feet, of which half is occupied by the headquarters of the Public Prosecution Service, the Northern Ireland equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service. The other half contains the New Bar Library of five stories with open plan seating with desks for 400 barristers, and 60 private rooms with accommodation for either two or three barristers. This mixture of desks as in the Old Bar

Library, and offices for those who prefer them, was deliberately chosen to offer accommodation that was closer to the chambers system to those who might otherwise have been tempted to break away from the Library structure and form chambers of the type in

England and Wales.

There was a very strong view within the Bar that in our conditions in Northern Ireland the collapse of the Library system could result in chambers being formed on political or sectarian lines, thereby undermining, and possibly destroying, the cohesion and collegial spirit that had held the Bar together despite the strains created by the tensions of ‘’, as our decades of terrorist violence and political unrest are euphemistically known. I should explain that it has never been compulsory for someone wishing to practise at the Bar of Northern

Ireland to be a subscriber to the Bar Library, although it is extremely rare for a barrister in independent practice not to be a member of the Bar Library.

At this point I would like to say something about the governance of the Bar. Until 1983 the affairs of the Bar and the management of the Bar Library were handled by the Bar Council.

Until 1968 the Bar Council was presided over by the Northern Ireland attorney general as head of the Bar, or by the senior member in the attorney’s absence. This changed in 1968 because the attorney of the day felt that the conflict between his position as a member of the

Northern Ireland government and as the representative of the Bar was such that he should no longer chair the Bar Council. Since 1968 the Chairman of the Bar has been elected by the

Bar.

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Until 1983 the benchers of the Inn of Court of Northern Ireland were responsible for education and admission to the Bar. The Royal Commission on Legal Services under Sir

Henry Benson scrutinised the governance of the Inn and the Bar, and as a result the Benchers handed over almost all their functions to a new body called the Executive Council of the Inn of Court. This was chaired by the chairman of the Bar Council, and consisted of members of the judiciary and members of the Bar Council. The Bar Council continued in being, and provided the officers, and the majority of the members of the Executive Council, and this remains the structure of governance today.

Just as the structures of governance of the legal profession in England and Wales, and in

Scotland, have been significantly changed as the result of reports by the Office of Fair

Trading in 2001 and Sir David Clementi in 2004, and the report on the legal services market in Scotland published in 2005, so the legal profession in Northern Ireland was scrutinised by the Legal Services Review Group set up by the Northern Ireland government. This Group was chaired by Professor Sir George Bain, a former vice chancellor of The Queen’s

University of Belfast, and comprised members of the business, consumer and voluntary sectors, as well as representatives of the Bar and the solicitors’ profession. After a rigorous examination of the situation in Northern Ireland Bain accepted the principle of a continued independent Bar, upheld the division of the legal profession, and rejected both partnerships between barristers and solicitors, and multi-disciplinary partnerships.

However, a number of changes in the governance of the Bar have been brought about as a result of the Bain Report because the educational and disciplinary functions of the Executive

Council are being transferred back to the benchers, thereby in large measure returning to the position before 1983, but with one very significant difference. The difference is that the bar benchers (that is benchers who are members of the Bar) will no longer be in a majority in the

Inn of Court, reversing a principle that had operated since in Ireland since 1872, and in

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Northern Ireland since 1926, namely that the benchers should have a majority of practising members of the Bar. The reason for this change is to ensure that when adjudicating on disciplinary matters barristers should be in a minority. Although Bain reported in 2006, the necessary legislation to set up a Legal Services Oversight Commissioner is at an advanced stage but has still not reached the statute book, no doubt a reflection of the low priority attached to the legislation by successive Northern Ireland finance ministers whose responsibility this is.

I would now like to say something about the size and composition of the present day

Northern Ireland Bar, and how the Library works. The most recent figures for membership of the Bar Library are that at the beginning of this year there were 669 members, 435 men and

234 women, made up of 93 QCs and 578 juniors. In addition, there a number of employed barristers and others, such as myself, who retain non-practicing membership for a small annual fee. However, as not all members are practising, a more accurate guide to the size of the Bar is the number of annual practising certificates issued by the Bar Council, as every practising barrister has to be in possession of a current practising certificate. At the beginning of this year there were 645 certificates, plus 8 temporary certificates, so one might say that the number of active practitioners is just below 650.

Although only a handful of women were called to the Northern Ireland Bar before the mid

1970s, one was Frances Kyle, a native of Belfast who was the first woman to be called to the

Bar in the British Isles when she called to the Irish Bar on 1 November 1921, and to the

Northern Ireland Bar shortly afterwards.24 From the early 1970s women made up an increasing proportion of those called to the Bar in each year, one being Mary McAlesse who was called in Michaelmas Term 1974 and had a distinguished academic career at Trinity

24 Ibid., pp 201-203. Frances Christian Kyle is the subject of an entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography.

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College, Dublin and Queen’s University, Belfast, before serving as President of Ireland between 1997 and 2011.

The Bar Library has a chief executive and a total of 30 administrative staff, including a librarian and research team who will carry out research for counsel, IT specialists and others.

A large number of essential functions are provided centrally, including a website through which solicitors can identify specialist counsel, or counsel who are available because they are already going to a particular court. Direct access to barristers is permitted for some specialist professions such as accountants and engineers, and the Bar has recently launched a Bar

Mediation Service. These facilities show that over the years the Northern Ireland Bar has modernized to ensure that its members continue to provide a high level of expertise and service to those who need to avail of the skills of its members.

With the huge increase in numbers in active practice during the past five decades, there has been an inevitable increase in specialisation at the Northern Ireland Bar. When I was called in

1969, the great majority of barristers were generalists, and personal injury work was the mainstay of the Bar, although a handful devoted themselves almost entirely to Chancery and related work, such as valuation cases in the Lands Tribunal. What I believe you would call chambers practice without ever going into court was almost unknown. With the increase in criminal work reflecting the amount of terrorist crime more and more barristers became exclusively or largely criminal practitioners, and the majority of them either appeared solely for the prosecution or the defence. But crime was not the only area where people specialized, and thus there is now a sizeable Family Bar. There are separate groupings reflecting different areas of work, such as the Criminal , and the Family Bar Association, with others specializing in other areas such as commercial law; administrative law and judicial review; employment law; coroners inquests and public inquiries to mention the main areas, although there is significant overlap between some of these groups in terms of barristers who

15 work in more than one field. For example, coroners inquests into what are known as “legacy cases” which relate to contentious events in our troubled past have been a fertile field for judicial review practitioners. Personal injury work, although still significant, has declined considerably in importance from its position of pre-eminence some decades ago, with insurers settling with solicitors in a much greater number of cases, with the result that there is less work for the Bar in this field than used to be the case.

Civil and criminal legal aid were not introduced in Northern Ireland until the 1960s,25 and in recent years there have been significantly reductions in the legal aid fees being paid to barristers. Even before these reductions were introduced, there had been many occasions when there were severe delays in payments being made to family and criminal defence barristers. By the mid 1990s delays of three years or more to family practitioners were not unusual, and these problems continued for several years, with the result that family practitioners considered withdrawing from family cases, and it was not until March 2010 that family practitioners were content with the fees suggested by the Legal Services Commission.

Disputes with government over reductions in fees to criminal defence practitioners in Crown

Court cases in Northern Ireland have led to major disruptions of the business of the Crown

Court within the last ten years when counsel and solicitors withdrew from criminal defence work, with major disputes in 2009, in 2011 and again between May 2015 and February 2016,

In the time available this has necessarily been a rapid survey of the principal features and characteristics of the Northern Ireland Bar. As will be apparent, the Northern Ireland Bar serves a relatively small population, albeit one deeply divided on constitutional and political issues, and has done so for nearly a century. Despite the many challenges it has faced, and

25 Although there had a been a rudimentary form of criminal defence legal aid since 1945 under the Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 1945, civil legal aid was not introduced until 1965 with the Legal Aid and Advice Act (Northern Ireland) 1965. For the Bar’s attitude to criminal and civil legal aid between 1945 and 1965 see Hart, A history of the Bar and Inn of Court of Northern Ireland, pp 229-237.

16 continues to face, the Northern Ireland Bar is a self-confident, self-sufficient and fiercely independent and proud profession. Over almost a century it has weathered many difficult and traumatic times, serving the entire community and playing an indispensable role in upholding the rule of law and the administration of justice in Northern Ireland, and it continues to do so.

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