Solicitors will have to try a little harder if they want to become High Court judges, the Lord Chief Justice suggested last week. ‘I doubt whether it is fully understood that any solicitors intending to seek a full-time judicial appointment should gain part-time sitting experience,’ Lord Judge said, ‘and that they should be supported by their professional partners if they do so.’
I am sure the Lord Chief Justice did not mean to suggest that solicitors were unaware of the compulsory - though paid - probationary period. All would-be judges are expected to sit part-time for at least three weeks a year over a minimum of two years. Lord Judge’s remarks seem to have been aimed at law firms that do not want to see any drop in partners’ billable hours.
This is borne out by a research report which Lord Judge was introducing with the remarks just quoted. Its author, Dame Hazel Genn, had been commissioned by the senior judiciary to find out why some highly-qualified lawyers were not seeking appointment to the High Court bench.
Dame Hazel, professor of socio-legal studies at University College London, interviewed eight senior solicitors from the ‘magic circle’ firms, five of whom were women. She also spoke to 21 barristers - all but two of them QCs - and six recently-appointed High Court judges.
The women solicitors did not mince their words when asked why they did not want to become judges.
‘Female solicitors who had reached partnership in magic circle firms, and who felt that their professional journey had been something of a struggle, were reluctant to begin again, and perhaps have to struggle to re-establish their credibility, in a world that they perceived to be even more antediluvian than City commercial law practice,’ Dame Hazel found.
Another issue for women who might be trying to juggle the demands of practice and family life was persuading the firm’s other partners that they should have time off to sit as judges. ‘First, the time commitment might be more than their co-partners felt could be spared from the practice. Second, they would have to forego a significant amount of salary to compensate for the time out of practice.
‘Third, they would have to work very hard to make up the time spent while sitting. Finally, they were concerned that taking a part-time judicial appointment might be interpreted by their partners as reflecting a lack of commitment to the practice.’
Taking time off to sit must be just as much of a problem for male solicitors. Gary Hickinbottom, whose call for a ‘culture change’ within law firms was reported in last week’s Gazette, was not too proud to have started his judicial career in 1994 as a part-time parking adjudicator. This week, he became a High Court judge.
After working at a high street solicitors’ firm in the Black Country during his university vacations, he trained as a commercial litigator with what is now CMS Cameron McKenna. Hickinbottom remained with the firm, spending 14 years as a partner before becoming a full-time circuit judge in 2000 when he was only 44.
‘City firms do not encourage you to go off and sit as a part-time judge,’ he told me when his appointment was announced last year. ‘Far from it.’
And he thought it was probably too late to begin sitting part-time in one’s fifties, when most City solicitors retire. You needed to have started by your mid-forties.
By 1994, when Hickinbottom began sitting, City firms no longer regarded it as prestigious to have a recorder on the letterhead. ‘It was regarded as a lost financial opportunity for the firm,’ he said.
There was only one option for him and for other solicitors with judicial ambitions. ‘I had to do as many hours, and bring in as much money as anybody else, in the time I spent at the firm. In those circumstances, they couldn’t say the nay.’
But surely City solicitors all worked 24 hours a day anyway? ���They do,’ he replied, ‘but I worked more. In slack periods, I worked a six-day week. In heavy periods it was a 13-day fortnight, in the office. And then I would have two weeks out to sit, sometimes three.
‘You have to make up the time when you could be - and probably should be - doing non-work activities. As a parking adjudicator - a humble post, but one in which you are dealing with people at hearings - I used to sit in the evenings. You could take a sitting from 5pm to 8pm, which was the equivalent of half a day.’
What was it that made him so determined to become a judge? ‘City solicitors, particularly in litigation, work hugely long hours,’ he explains. ‘And although I don’t mind hard work, I didn’t want to do that job for the whole of my working life.’
He thought he should give himself a good run at the bench, rather than seeking an appointment at the age of 60. His first job will be Deputy Senior President of Tribunals. But, at just 53, he is young enough to get to the Court of Appeal and beyond.
Lord Judge believes that allowing solicitors enough time to sit judicially ‘should not present an insuperable burden’. But it was an issue the profession would have to address if they, like he, wanted to see more solicitors on the High Court bench.
Of course, some solicitors are finding they have rather more time on their hands these days. Joining the judiciary is a sure-fire way of surviving the recession.
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