Opinion | Why the justice secretary’s senior counsel push has merit
- Teresa Cheng’s proposal seeks to end unjustifiable discrimination between legal officers performing identical or similar duties
- The situation of Hong Kong’s solicitor-advocates also requires redress
If, therefore, a solicitor is undertaking responsibilities at the highest level to an impeccable standard, which can and does happen, given that the Department of Justice treats all its legal officers equally, it is unfair to deny him or her the right to seek what Chief Justice Andrew Cheung Kui-nung calls a “badge of responsibility”.
The unsatisfactory situation was highlighted recently by the experience of one of Cheng’s senior prosecutors, who took silk last month. Although she was regularly conducting cases in the highest courts, she could not at the time apply for silk because she was a solicitor.
Cheng’s proposal, therefore, is meritorious and seeks to end unjustifiable discrimination between legal officers performing identical or similar duties. Perhaps anticipating resistance from the Bar Association, she has also indicated that any solicitor appointed to silk under her proposal would forfeit the rank on retirement.
This means they would not be able to practise as senior counsel in the private sector after they leave the department, and would not therefore compete with the Bar for work. This breaks with the current arrangement, whereby legal officers who are silks can practise at the Bar on leaving government.
