LAST WORD 

mentor;n An experienced and trusted advisor or guide; a teacher or tutor. A word taken from classical Greek character, Mentor  who was the guide and adviser of Odysseus’ son Telemachus.

Everyone starting out in his or her career needs a mentor to gently guide the way forward based upon the mentor’s years of experience. Even as one’s own career proceeds trusted colleagues are as important as one’s earlier mentors. My two major influences at the Bar came from my sporting interests of athletics and rugby. Myer Rosenblum, a solicitor, was for a while my athletics coach. He taught me that to be a good lawyer you had to be well-read, particularly in the classics. My master barrister Frank Curran was rugby coach and player who on the field and in court taught me how to hustle and bustle. I learnt the skills of good advocacy based upon solid preparation and being courageous in court from Michael Finnane, QC and John Trew, QC. Four unforgettable characters.

As a barrister now in continuous practice for over forty years I have had many other mentors and I believe have acted as a helpful mentor to others. Such has been possible by being a member of chambers. One of the many ravages of Covid was for a while the need to work remotely on a computer screen. Writing in the December 2022 edition of Quadrant Lord Sumption saw the lockdowns as an assault on our liberties by authoritarian governments. He wrote the following ;

“ It is not simply the assault on the concept of liberty that matters. It is the particular liberty which has been most obviously discarded, namely the liberty to associate with other human beings. Association with other human beings is not just an optional extra. It is not just a leisure option. It is fundamental to our humanity. Our emotional relationships, our mental wellbeing, our economic fortunes, our entire social existence is built upon the ability of people to come together. That is why I regard lockdowns as a sustained attack on our humanity.”

Once the lockdowns were over it seems that some things will not return to pre-Covid ways for which there are some benefits and some detriments. Working remotely and from home does have some advantages. That benefit however needs to be carefully managed so as not to lose the human contact with one’s professional colleagues. This is particularly so in barristers’ chambers. Over the years I have learnt a lot from my colleagues from casual conversation about cases, precedents and the idiosyncrasies of judges and other lawyers. The opportunity to participate in such random conversations is severely curtailed by working from home.

In a recent book by Edward Slingerland, Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia,  entitled “DRUNK , how we sipped, danced and stumbled our way to civilisation” the following is stated;

“ This book was written in the midst of the of the Covid pandemic. It will take years to understand the various ways in which this crisis may have negatively impacted innovation. More obvious and dramatic factors, like the stress of caring for sick loved ones or homeschooling children, clearly slashed productivity and narrowed one’s focus. Less obvious, perhaps, is the way in which the widespread and abrupt transition from in-person meetings to Zoom and Google Hangouts has changed the way people talk and think. Wide-ranging chats over a few beers, sprawling over an hour or two, have been replaced by shorter video meetings focused on a specific set of agenda points. In this artificial medium, people have trouble naturally interrupting one another or smoothly navigating shifts in topic or speaker. This is one of the ways in which the Covid crisis, like American Prohibition, might provide an excellent natural experiment demonstrating how meeting in person, often over alcohol, enhances both individual and group creativity .”

Over my long career I have gathered knowledge, formed friendships and developed my emotional intelligence at Friday night drinks in chambers, at lunches and particularly at dinners on country court circuits with other lawyers including the judge. Such lessons are not readily available remotely on a computer screen.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released figures regarding trade union membership in December 2022. It showed that trade union membership has generally declined since 1992. From 1992 to 2022, the proportion of employees who were trade union members has fallen from 41.1% to 12.5% ( 45.5% to 11.4% for men and 35.9% to 13.6% for women). It is difficult to see how this decline can be slowed. If not for the trail commissions from industry superannuation funds many unions would have gone into liquidation. The reason for this decline can be debated. It may a societal issue about people not joining or leaving hitherto strong orgnisations, such as the churches. My hunch is that the process of amalgamations of unions during the 1980s caused a loss of a sense of belonging to one’s craft union or guild. This is particularly so in large unions of disparate and ultimately antagonistic divisions, see the impending split up of the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union.

With raw union membership numbers in  2022 of 1.4 million  there are probably more registered netball and soccer players in the country.

Jeffrey Phillips,SC

State Chambers ,

Sydney