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05 November 2021 / Theo Huckle KC
Issue: 7955 / Categories: Opinion , Profession
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Here to act, not to judge

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In the first of a special two-part series, Theo Huckle QC explains how the talking-down of lawyers over many years shows a serious lack of leadership in public debate

I recently read a piece in a very well-known political/current affairs journal in which the commentator seemed to me to be implying that our lawyer colleagues should exercise more moral (moralising?) judgement about the cases they are prepared to take on, and they don’t do it enough, but that, nevertheless, ‘better the Devil you know’ with lawyers as we have them (Prospect, ‘Should a lawyer ever refuse to act in an unpleasant case?’, David Allen Green, April 2021). The piece left me with a deep sense of unease, and I thought it reflected the present parlous state of thought leadership about our justice system and the way that lawyers work within it and should do. How opinion-formers such as the readers of the journal in question view the legal system and professions matters to what happens to justice in this country, which has already been neglected

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