Thread by @GeorgePeretzQC

One question that arises from this: should Attorneys General do court advocacy at all?

https://twitter.com/joshuarozenberg/status/1339206446207143942

As @BarristerSecret points out, the current Attorney General’s outing on this occasion does not appear to have been an unmixed triumph of advocacy.

https://twitter.com/barristersecret/status/1339173195010674689

About 100 years ago, Attorneys General frequently appeared in big criminal trials - and was obliged to prosecute all poisoning cases personally. He (always he, of course) would also represent the government in important civil cases.

The Attorney now has too many responsibilities to spend most of each week in the Old Bailey or Royal Courts of Justice. But should he or she just leave it to the public law bar (and the Treasury Devils in particular)?

My view is that the best argument for the AG to lead in some cases is not so much to mark the importance of particular cases to the government but to keep their hand in as practising advocates.

One of the reasons why clients go to barristers for advice in tricky cases is not that they know the law any better than non-advocate solicitors or legal academics, but because they have frequent encounters with judges and get a feel for how judges are likely to react to things.

In many cases, your advice is along the lines of “yes, I see that: but it won’t wash with Cocklecarrot J on a wet Wednesday afternoon”

It is easier to give such advice (it is likely to be more informed and credible with your clients) if you do at least sometimes have to argue tricky points of law in front of Cocklecarrot J on a wet Wednesday afternoon.

But if you are going to do that, you need to do it properly rather than as a cameo. You have to get yourself fully briefed and in top of all the facts and law.

That was the approach of Lord Goldsmith as AG under Blair: he did a scattering of short cases (1-2 days legal argument) that were important but not critical and which interested him.

Disclosure: he led me on two such cases (although in one he couldn’t do it at the last minute). In both cases he fully prepared, had thorough conferences with his juniors - I remember one at 7am. He was completely on top of it - and did it excellently.

The problem of course is that in order to perform brilliantly in that sort of case (and if you’re going to be second rate you shouldn’t do it) you need to have had many years of real experience at the Bar.

And as Joshua explains, that’s pretty hard to impossible for MPs. thecritic.co.uk/issues/novembe…

FWIW as an observer from outside, my own view is that Blair was right (as Joshua points out) to appoint a “mixed team” as Law Officers: either the Attorney or the Solicitor General were eminent QCs with real advocacy experience (put in the Lords) and the other was a lawyer MP.

That meant that the team as a whole combined the political nous of a serving MP with the heft of an experienced lawyer used to presenting hard legal arguments in court. The best of both worlds.