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NSW Chief Justice Sees Red Over Lawyer Fees

Tuesday, 3 February 2009, 10:17 (EST)
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Speaking after the annual Red Mass to open the 2009 law term, New South Wales Chief Justice Jim Spigelman challenged lawyers to cut their costs and charges to clients or risk being marginalised.

The economic downturn is potentially so severe it could mark the end of an era in the law that "treated commercial values as of overriding significance", Chief Justice Spigelman said according to a report in The Australian.

The Chief Justice, who began his day with the traditional Red Mass at St Mary's Cathedral, said the downturn was already having an effect on the flow of litigation.

Afterwards, he predicted there would be renewed emphasis on the "moral code that underpins the traditional authority of our profession."

"That ethic of service, which emphasises honesty, fidelity, diligence and professional self restraint, will now resume its salience over the pursuit of commercial gain at the core of legal practice," the Chief Justice said.

"Economic adversity will increase cost consciousness at all levels."

Cutting costs, he said, was not only in the public interest, it was in the "enlightened self interest" of all legal practitioners.

"If the profession is too greedy, it will end up with less, and in some fields, with nothing," he told the lawyers.

The US legal profession holds its Red Mass in October, at the start of its law term, at the Cathedral of St Matthew the Apostle in Washington.

There has been hardly a president since Harry Truman who has not attended, including George W. Bush.

Cardinal George Pell said it would be interesting to see whether Barack Obama turned up to the service this year.



Source: CathNews


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