Readers' Course revisited - Victorian Bar

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IF: The Victorian Bar Readers’ Course is about to have its 30th anniversary. With your long involvement in advocacy training, you must both have seen many changes in the course since the heady days of 1979? GH: We have indeed and of course ours was the first in Australia and it took me years to persuade our New South Wales colleagues that they should start one. They laughed at the proposition in the beginning, saying that barristers don’t need advocacy training – you’ve either got the gift or you haven’t. Finally they saw the light and started their own course about ten years after ours began. Our Readers’ Course is generally acknowledged as the best around, and in recent years we thought we should review how we can keep it that way. IH: Issues being canvassed in the review of the course are whether there should be entrance examinations and whether people should be able to start the course straight after completing articles or Leo Cussen. IF: Are there restrictive trade practice issues about that? IH: There may well be but you can’t get a full practising certificate as a solicitor before you’ve practised for 18 months after articles and more for after Leo. We are allowing people who could not practise in their own right as a solicitor to practise in their own right as a barrister. Now I know there are differences with trust accounts which we don’t have but all those things are being examined. We are looking afresh at the content of the course, examinations at the end, and assessment during it. Part of the professionalisation is utilising George Hampel’s Advocacy Manual (written with Elizabeth Brimer and Gabriel Kune). IF: How does the book come into the course reassessment? IH: The book is a very good resource for readers but there is more than that in terms of further professionalising the course. We are looking at better educating our instructors so they can teach better and assess in a way which gives effective and fair feedback to the students. GH: The focus on instructors is very important. There is a misconception in just about every field of skills training that because you are good at what you do therefore you can teach. That just isn’t right. We want to train our instructors in the same way that instructors in other places, including universities, are trained these days. IH: We are looking at certification for instructors at different levels. That might mean that some of those who can teach may not be permitted to assess. There are different skill sets for which there need to be different levels and kinds of proficiency. GH: One option is to learn from developments in the United Kingdom. Since we introduced the training concept there in the mid ’90s they have come a long way. One of the things they do very well is to be very strict about training their teachers and they don’t permit people to teach unless they are satisfied that they are at a particular level. They grade them and teach them and have their teaching proficiency reviewed every two or three years. In that respect they have an edge on us. IH: I have just read the Attorney-General’s column in the recent Bar News suggesting that perhaps chambers should provide an income for readers as they do in England at about the minimum wage for a legal executive. IF: What do you think of that idea, Ian? IH: We are looking into it but I don’t think it will happen here. There are significant differences between England and here. We have a very low cost Readers’ Course ($3771) if you compare it with higher education costs at university. To do one subject in a Master’s degree costs much the same as to pay for the Readers’ Course. GH: It shouldn’t be forgotten, too, that we provide a place for an indigenous reader and for up to four readers from the South Pacific region. We currently have four from Papua New Guinea. IF: That has been one of the real achievements of the course – to stretch out a helpful hand to our neighbours. IH: Yes. I think the Victorian Bar is very well respected in the South Pacific. In fact we have had contact from Fiji wanting us to go there to put on an appellate advocacy course. IF: There’s a growing awareness of appellate advocacy, isn’t there. There’s been a recent book by Blank and Selby about that subject which seems to have been well received so far, but it’s been one of the neglected areas until recent times. VICTORIAN BAR NEWS Summer 2008 / 2009 25
The Honourable George Hampel QC GH: Yes, that’s right because I think that most advocacy training has to date or almost to date been treated as for beginners. There’s been a culture in the legal profession that once you’ve done your basic training that’s all you need to do. But we are now developing much more into ongoing education across the board in law, but including in advocacy. Just a couple of months ago we did the Bar cross-examination workshop for the English Bar in London and we did one in Darwin just recently. So there is a lot of that coming along but it’s only a fairly recent development. We are hoping to introduce a bit of that culture to our Bar. One of the things that we might look at as part of the review is whether there should be either as part of or as an addition to the Readers’ Course an obligation to do a supplementary course of short duration after people have been in practice for, say, 12 months or two years. IF: It’s interesting, isn’t it, that we have mandatory attendance now at continuing professional development lectures but for most of us our real stock in trade is advocacy and there’s no mandatory ongoing professional development in that regard. GH: The main attendance at the Advocacy Institute courses for barristers is at the more senior level. I couldn’t tell you the numbers with precision but over the years we have had some 60 or 70 silks overall attend them. We have had teachers like Gleeson, Kirby, Jackson, Bennett, Burnside, Felicity and myself. It works and that’s really terrific. So that’s what I’d like to encourage in terms of changing the culture at all levels of our Bar. IF: Looking at the changing times then, what are the main elements of change in advocacy styles that you have both noticed in the courts over the duration of our Readers’ Course? IH: Well, I think when I first came to the Bar, we used to shout at witnesses and we used to rough them up and it was sort of war. Now it’s more subtle and more effective. GH: It’s much more issue driven now. Judges, and I think juries, don’t want to waltz around. They want to get to the point. There is a greater focus on conceptualising your case, getting to a case theory, and going for it. That has made a vast difference because people are actually forced to think about what they are going to do, in advance, instead of waiting to see what happens. IH: It is also very handy before a jury because not only do the jurors know what the issues are but you get a chance to lay it out and impart your defence. GH: And it enables a judge to better decide admissibility and relevance issues as they arise. The trend is apparent in the appellate courts too where the judges will say: ‘What’s your best point?’ And there’s also the trend towards more and more paperless trials. That is going to keep on growing. Even in the last five years or so there have been a number of trials where everything has been up there on the screens. The Victorian Law Reform Commission Report on Civil Justice is looking to facilitate such developments too. IF: I’ve observed greater use of written submissions across jurisdictions. IH: Certainly. I’ve been noticing that in crime in particular, where written submissions are becoming much more common than they used to be. Counsel will start by handing up an outline of written argument, be it to a magistrate or a judge, and then speak to the written outline. I’m sure that that is being found helpful by the Bench but it requires different skills than those in traditional oral advocacy. IF: In terms of style, do you think we’ll move to usage of multimedia in closing and opening addresses using PowerPoint and similar? That would be another shift in our longstanding dependence upon oral presentation. GH: We all keep saying that a picture is worth a thousand words but so far we are using forms of presentation that are not oral in only certain situations. We use diagrams and charts, simulations and re-enactments. That must evolve further. IH: I agree. We are starting to use aidememoires and summaries and chronologies much more now than we used to. Why can’t they be used electronically? IF: If there is going to be more use of computer-generated images in court, this will impact on advocacy skills. It will need to be part of the advocacy training of the future. IH: Bearing in mind that most of the readers that we see now have been through university in more recent times, and as a result are computer literate, that has to be so. GH: There’s a fair bit of work being done at the National Institute of Trial Advocacy in the United States about that. We haven’t started doing that yet but the concepts are the same; it’s the application that’s differs somewhat. It’s long overdue in the sense 26 VICTORIAN BAR NEWS Summer 2008 / 2009
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Readers' Course revisited - Victorian Bar

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