THE LAW-OFFICERS AND PRIVATE PRACTICE.
THOUGH the exact arrangements made with the new law-officers in regard to private practice have not yet been published, it is evident that changes are to be made, and that the positions of Attorney and Solicitor- General are to be put on a new footing. That an altera- tion of the old system is to be desired we do not doubt, though it must be remembered that it will be difficult, in taking a new departure, to avoid inconveniences almost as grave as those which belonged to the plan of allowing the law-officers to take as much private practice as they could get. No doubt the ideal arrangement would be to get the two best lawyers on the Government side, and then to make them confine their attention to Government business. Unfortunately, however, the condition that they must con- fine themselves to Government business would very pro- bably forbid the other condition—the. obtaining of the two best men at the Bar on the Government side. A practice—as every professional man, be he lawyer or doctor, knows well enough—is not a thing that can be laid down and taken up at pleasure. It is as easy to lose as it is hard to get. An income of .27,000 a year, plus fees amounting to another £5,000, for the Attorney, and £6,000, plus fees equal to another £2,500, for the Solicitor- General, sounds liberal ; but a barrister making £12,000 a year, or even 0210,000 in private practice, may well hesitate to take either post. If he were sure of the .212,000 a year for, say, six years, the certainty of the pay, the compara- tively easy work, and the prestige of the office, might pos- sibly tempt a man to abandon his private practice. No one, however, can count upon any such length of office. Two years is the most a law-officer can reckon on, and this is obviously not enough to justify a lawyer in giving up private work. Take the position of a man making only .210,000 a year, who gives up his private work to become Attorney-General. In two years he is out of office, and he has then to begin to acquire laboriously a new business, and to get back his old clients. One or two men with very special abilities might succeed at this ; but, as a rule, the attempt would prove a failure. New men would have come to the top of the profession in the two years, and would have obtained the favour of the solicitors, and the unfortunate ex-Attorney-General would have to be content with a few complimentary briefs, given more for old ac- quaintance sake than in the regular way of business. This the leading lawyers know well enough, and it would there- fore be impossible to tempt them by any salary that Parlia- ment could pay to give up all private practice. We doubt if even 220,000 a year while he was Attorney-General would tempt a man making only £10,000. Ten thousand a year for ten years is obviously much better than £20,000 for perhaps one and a half. The question then is,— Can any via media be found between letting the law- officers take private practice, and the plan of forbidding them all private work,—a plan which is very likely to lead to the refusal of the best men to undertake the legal work of the Government. On the one hand, there is the chance of very grave scandals arising of the kind that occurred when Sir Richard Webster undertook to argue the case for the Times before the Parnell Commis- sion, or when he defended Mr. Hurlbert. Sir Richard Webster no doubt acted in perfect good faith, but the system which made him legal adviser to a Government whose aim it was to remain neutral in the matter of the Commission, and also legal adviser to the Times, was clearly intolerable. On the other hand, there is a very real risk that by disallowing private practice we may fail to secure the best legal ability to advise the Administration. The plan that has been suggested for getting over this difficulty and obtaining the advantages of both systems—a plan which, it is said, has actually been adopted—is this. The Attorney-General and Solicitor-General are to be forbidden to • take any private work except appeals before the House of Lords and the Judicial Com- mittee of the Privy Council. It is argued with no little show of reason that such appeals, involving as they do nothing but points of law, could not be the cause of any scandal. It is only actions in Courts. of first instance, criminal cases, actions for libel and for damages generally, in a word, cases in which facts are in dispute, that are likely to produce inconvenience ; and in giving up these the law-officers would, therefore, give up the chief, if not the only source of danger. At the same time, the appeals would be very lucrative, and would in a great measure prevent a private practice from slipping away altogether. The solicitors would not altogether give up calling at the Attorney-General's chambers, but would merely select for him a certain class of briefs.
If this compromise should not turn out workable, we can see but one way out of the difficulty. This is the making of the Solicitor-Generalship a permanent office. and the attaching of a pension to the post of Attorney- General. It would not be possible to make both posts per- manent, for the Government must have a trained lawyer in the House to speak for them when points involving legal technicalities turn up in debate. If, however, the Solicitor-General were a permanent law-adviser to the Crown, with a salary of £6,000 a year and fees, it would be possible to get the very best men in the profession to take the post. The security, the high pay, and the dignity of the office would make it regarded as as good or better than a Lord-Justiceship. The Attorney-General should, we sug- gest, remain a Parliamentary officer. He should, however, be precluded from taking private practice, obtaining com- pensation for this by the right to a pension of £4,000 a year as long as he did not take a Judgeship or obtain a re- appointment to the office of Attorney-General. Probably it would be necessary to enact, as in the case of the Chancellors, that not more than two pensions should be in existence at any one time. This plan has, we believe, many advantages. It is urged, and urged truly, we think, in opposition to permanent law-officers, that a permanent Attorney and a permanent Solicitor-General would get out of touch with the Courts. At present, the law-officers come fresh from the rough-and-tumble of private practice, and this prevents them from becoming too formal and too official in their style of advocacy. Men, too, who had had nothing but Govern. ment work for twenty years would be anything but safe guides to a Ministry on the matters which lie between law and policy. An arrangement, however, under which one law-officer was permanent and the other Parliamentary, would give an Administration the benefit of both the per. manent official's way of looking at a difficulty, and of the recently practising barrister's. Again, the permanent law-officer, just as the permanent Under-Secretaries of State do in their departments, would secure that con- tinuity which is so valuable in the work of administration. It is whispered that at present it is a sort of etiquette in half-finished business for the incoming law-officers to give opinions exactly contrary to those expressed by the out- going officers. Possibly this is, to some extent, an exaggeration, but unquestionably a good many things are reversed which might just as well be let alone, and which would be let alone if there were a permanent law-adviser to her Majesty's Government, whose business it would be to act with and assist the Parliamentary law-officer. This plan, however, is too revolutionary to be carried out by any Government formed under Mr. Gladstone, and we are, therefore, far more likely to see the simpler arrangement, under which private practice will only be allowed in ulti- mate appeals, carried out. That may, we should trust, provide an efficient remedy. If it does not, it will be time to consider the arrangement we have suggested.
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