Barristers are “normal people living busy professional lives”. Many do important public service work and a lot of commentary disparaging them relies on “cliches and tropes”, says the new chairman of the Bar council, Seán Guerin.
Speaking four months after taking over as chairman of the professional body for barristers, Guerin strongly defends the Bar’s pupillage system.
The system is in the public spotlight after Simeon Burke, a qualified barrister, was unable to persuade any of the 150 barristers registered as masters by the Bar to take him on as a pupil.
The “master and devil” system has been described by some as arcane, with questions raised about rules requiring supervising barristers, better known as masters, to have Dublin-based practices and ability to pay their apprentices, known as devils, Law Library and other fees in their pupillage year.
Guerin declines to comment on Burke’s case but says the pupillage arrangement – “although around a long time” – is “a very modern institution” that responds to the needs of young people starting out in careers or employment in an “incredibly valuable” way.
The system benefits the pupil more than master and involves an experienced practising barrister “throwing open the doors of their practice” to a new entrant, giving them the entire experience of their practice for one legal year and introductions to solicitors who bring them work through cases.
Almost every qualified barrister who wants to practise at the Bar as a member of the Law Library can do so, primarily because the Bar has about twice as many masters as there are first year pupils coming in, he says.
This is in contrast with England and Wales, where the chances of getting a pupillage in a chambers is about one in eight.
The Dublin-based requirement for masters “reflects the reality” that the vast majority of legal work, and work in the superior courts, is carried out in Dublin.
A busy practice is “the real concern”, says Guerin. The training arrangements have to meet the approval of the Legal Services Regulatory Authority (LSRA) and the Bar is “very conscious” that the quality of training provided by masters meet that standard.
“There can be no question therefore of allowing someone to take a pupil out of a misguided sense of sympathy for the pupil,” he says.
The rule requiring a master to pay their pupil’s €3,500 Law Library fee and other costs is aimed at breaking down a barrier to entry to the profession because pupils previously had to pay those costs themselves.
A barrister whose earnings are insufficient to meet those costs “may not have a sufficiently busy practice to be a good master in the first place”, he says.
What has effectively happened is ‘simply the extraction of value from the Irish economy by large multinational insurance companies, done largely on the pretence of reducing legal costs by the artificial creation of a sort of ogreish legal profession’
— Guerin's view on falling costs in personal injury claims
Guerin, a native of Wexford town, was born into a family with no legal connections; his father was a garda and his mother a public health nurse.
He was educated at St Peter’s College in Wexford and St Andrew’s College in Dublin. An interest in debating and the British television legal drama series Rumpole of the Bailey set him on the road to a legal career.
He studied law in UCD and at the Université de Nancy II in France, and qualified as a barrister at the King’s Inns. He was called to the Bar in 1997 and appointed a senior counsel in 2013.
He has a successful legal practice in civil and criminal law and has been involved in many high-profile cases. He prosecuted Dublin architect Graham Dwyer for the 2012 murder of childcare worker Elaine O’Hara. He represented the families of 47 victims at the inquest into the 1981 Stardust nightclub fire disaster.
At the request of government, he prepared a report examining how the claims of Garda whistleblower Maurice McCabe were handled. It led to the resignation of Alan Shatter as minister for justice.
In 2019 the Supreme Court found some of the report’s conclusions were beyond the scope of the inquiry, leading to them being removed from the Dáil record. Guerin has consistently declined to comment on the matter.
In a wide-ranging interview, Guerin says he hopes the council’s recently launched justice manifesto will promote “informed and substantive” discussion of the public policy importance of “a functioning and adequately resourced” system for the administration of justice and appreciation of the role of lawyers.
Much commentary about lawyers and barristers relies on “cliches and tropes” when the reality is barristers are doing important public service and other legal work essential to Ireland’s society and economy, he says.
People who hear public comment disparaging the profession because of earnings levels or being out of touch “should pay particular attention” to who is making those comments and their agenda, “which very often is to undermine or diminish the quality of the administration of justice for ordinary citizens”.
Perhaps “the best example” is talk over decades of reducing legal costs in personal injury claims.
“Look at the extent to which the claims costs per policy has been falling but premium income per policy has been increased,” says Guerin.
What has effectively happened is “simply the extraction of value from the Irish economy by large multinational insurance companies, done largely on the pretence of reducing legal costs by the artificial creation of a sort of ogreish legal profession”, he says.
Asked about financial barriers to entry to the legal professions identified in the recent Breaking Down Barriers report from the LSRA, Guerin says the Bar is willing to co-operate to implement its recommendations.
A broader point is that a profession dependent on academic achievements for entry cannot be expected to be completely representative of society if not everyone can achieve them, he says.
Guerin insists the Bar is “in general a very open profession” but does not deny the need to improve how the Bar “can welcome people from backgrounds not fully or equally represented now”.
The Bar, while having “very significant” numbers of female entrants, does not have that same number of women at senior counsel level, he says. The Bar is doing “as much as it can”, including arrangements for maternity leave.
“To some extent, that is a consequence of the difficulties associated with self-employment and, to some extent, a consequence of choices that individual women make,” says Guerin.
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Asked about a recommendation the Bar might use its annual levy on members to provide more financial support for prospective barristers to increase diversity of intake, he says a “much larger” debate could be had about funding early-stage legal careers.
If there were “blue-sky thinking” on how to structure the justice system, it would be legitimate to ask why the State does not fund the education and training of lawyers who will provide a public service, he says.
The Bar council is not asking for that at present but it “should be part of the discussion”, he says, pointing to how the State funds the training of doctors.
The Bar council’s manifesto stresses the importance of the justice system for ordinary citizens to vindicate rights and resolve disputes, but the debate about the system is “very often conducted in terms that are quite cynical of the role of lawyers and unappreciative of the service that lawyers provide”.
Asked about how many people have a negative experience of the legal system, including the heavy costs cases can impose, he says much of that points to the need to revisit the rules for conduct of litigation.
Guerin says everyone recognises the system is “always capable of improvement” and the Bar supports proposals to increase judicial and court resources.
He does not believe eye-watering fees paid to commercial barristers in long-running global aviation cases should create a negative perception of barristers. The country needs a top-quality international commercial dispute resolution service for businesses, he says.
He stresses that criminal lawyers are not asserting they should be paid the same fees people are paid in international commercial disputes.
He is noncommittal about the prospect of further strike action by criminal barristers in pursuit of full restoration of post-financial crash criminal legal aid payments.
The Bar is encouraging its members to hold politicians to the outgoing Government’s pledge to restore full pay – a position that has cross-party support in the Oireachtas, he says.
The “real danger” in not adequately paying criminal barristers “is that it makes the practice of criminal law much less attractive and the real loser in the long term is the public”, he says.
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