Earnings at the Bar
The Attorney-General on Monday made what on its merits seems an unanswerable case for a new scale of remuneration for the Bar and Bench. When it is recognised what the course of prices has been, the fact that the stipend of High Court Judges is what it was a hundred years ago (£5,000) is a plain scandal. Compare the new rates just acceded to the doctors. It is no answer to say that it represents ease and dignity, which a man can support out of his large earnings at the Bar, for, as Sir Lionel Heald observed, even successful silks find it hard to save on any considerable scale under present conditions. On the other side the demand for cheaper litigation grows, and from the point of view of the litigant with much justification. There is no ready solution to the problem, but any profession in which the reasonable rewards are not such as to attract first-class men will inevitably suffer. The Attorney-General is in a better position than most people to initiate reform, but he confesses that as yet he sees no way through the wood. Perhaps someone else may.
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