Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/116

 Etiquette of the English Bar.

95

ETIQUETTE OF THE ENGLISH BAR. A BARRISTER'S GRUMBLE. THE etiquette of the bar, like every lex non sci'ipta, is somewhat vague and difficult to define precisely. So much un certainty prevails in matters of detail, that the highest authorities differ on points of con stant occurrence. One large class of rules of etiquette is conceived in the narrowest spirit of exclusion, and has for its direct object to increase the expense of the profession to practitioners. For instance, a barrister must enter and leave the circuit town riding firstclass, and if he stays at a hotel he must not dine in the public room. The reasons some times put forward in defense of these and similar rules, will not stand the test of a moment's investigation. It has been said that they are requisite to keep up the social position of the bar; but men of far higher station habitually travel third-class and dine in the public room of a hotel. They are sometimes defended on the ground that it is requisite to prevent the bar from coming in contact with solicitors, and other subordinate actors in the performance of an assize. This plea is either in substance the same as the former one, and rests upon some mistaken notion of artificial "respectability"; or it assumes that barristers would unfairly turn such casual encounters into opportunities for securing business. But these are lame attempts to account for the class of rules in question in some other way than the true one. The truth is, that they are designed to make the profession as expensive as pos sible, and thereby to exclude competition. To be a " barrister" on circuit is a sufficient reason in the provincial mind for being fleeced and overcharged. The real object in view was precisely that which trade guilds and crafts pursued in former days. They, too, had rules of etiquette and by-laws of their own, by which they made access to a

particular trade difficult, and so diminished competition. The same result is obtained by the class of rules now under considera tion. Rules of this kind are against the interest of the public. The public have a clear interest that every man qualified to do the work of the profession should be allowed and enabled to compete for it; but even the profession has no longer any interest in keeping up these rules. In the present state of the bar, the number of practitioners who, in spite of the rules, are able to crowd each circuit, is so much larger than the bus iness to be distributed would require, that it is perfectly idle to hope for any advantage by the exclusion of a few more. Behind the few men in business there is already so large a crowd of able expectants, only half of whom can ever fight their way into remu nerative employment, that it is wholly im material whether some more names are added to the list of those doomed to disap pointment. Of the same character are the rules which throw difficulties in the way of a change of session or circuit, and the rules as to special retainers. The object is to fetter competition as much as possible, and to protect those who have secured a certain status from the intrusion of dangerous rivals. "Is Mr. Spout," it will be asked, " to be allowed to range unchecked from circuit to circuit, skimming the cream of every cause list?" Why not? If the public prefer Mr. Spout of another circuit to Mr. Slowcoach of their own circuit, they may surely com plain of being taxed for the preference by a rule of etiquette and obliged to pay a higher fee than Mr. Spout himself would think sufficient. Besides, if Mr. Spout obtains a brief which Mr. Slowcoach would have had, does not Mr. Hopeful, of the same circuit as Mr. Slowcoach, profit largely by his absence,