Kolya on 26/10/2007 at 19:36
Is it true that when you bring a case from the British Lower Court to the High Court, the solicitor (lawyer) isn't allowed to speak directly to the judge, but has to tell a barrister what he should say to the judge, while all three persons are in the same room?
jay pettitt on 26/10/2007 at 20:08
You forgot the bit where some of them are wearing wigs.
Matthew on 29/10/2007 at 10:51
It's not a feature solely of the High Court; in many of the courts solicitors do not have rights of audience, though this is changing.
Solicitors don't really tell barristers what to say, by the way. The barrister gives directions to the solicitor in a lot of cases.
Kolya on 30/10/2007 at 01:36
Which courts beside the High Court don't give solicitors audience?
Maybe I should explain why I ask such difficult questions: My girlfriend has studied law and currently extends it to international law. So that was one of the things she learns there. Also that the solicitor-barrister system is based on the student's financial backing for the most part since studying law in the UK only enables you to work as a solicitor while you need to do an additional and very costly extra apprenticeship to become a barrister.
Matthew on 30/10/2007 at 10:51
One thing to be aware of is that there is technically only one 'UK court' - the House of Lords. England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all have their own lower court systems which may or may not take notice of each other. I practice in Northern Ireland, for example, which has its own Magistrates Court, Crown Court, County Court, High Court and Court of Appeals.
A law degree in and of itself doesn't entitle you to practice as solicitor or barrister; to do that you need to take a further course. In Northern Ireland it's the Certificate of Professional Legal Studies, for example (during which you can either take a solicitor's course or a barrister's course), in England it's generally called the Legal Practice Course for a solicitor or the Bar Vocational Course for a barrister.
As that last sentence implies, you do not become a solicitor and then somehow 'graduate' to becoming a barrister - most people make a conscious choice to follow one path or the other during their studies and take the appropriate course after university. Both are in fact horribly expensive unless you can get sponsorship, either by way of a bursary or by having the firm/chambers that you will be apprenticing with pay your fees.
It's a bit worse for barristers in Northern Ireland as we don't have the same 'chambers' system that England does, rather we work on a 'library' system where every barrister is self-employed; on the upside you don't have to hunt around for a chamber to employ you, but on the other hand you are self-employed and must chase down work yourself through your own contacts.
As for rights of audience for solicitors, I can only speak for Northern Ireland: generally we would instruct barristers for anything involving the County Court and upwards, though as I say the County Court and High Court and becoming available for the more ambitious solicitors to appear directly before the judge. In fact, we had our first solicitor QC called this summer.
