The ‘split’ legal profession in Hong Kong

Barristers specialise in court work and legal advice relating to litigation.

Photo: Yik Yeung-man A major feature of Hong Kong’s legal profession is the division between barristers and solicitors.

Barristers specialise in court work and legal advice relating to litigation, and can generally only be engaged through a solicitor.

Solicitors provide a broader range of legal services, covering both contentious and non-contentious matters.

Some solicitors also focus on courtroom advocacy and are accredited as solicitor-advocates.

The “split” profession is not common to all legal systems.

In fact, it is sometimes said that if one were to conceive of a legal system from scratch, it would not be the most obvious thing to split the legal profession into two.

Yet when one looks at the historical origins of the two professions, one can see why things happened in the way they did.

In the early days of the common law, the royal court sat in London and also went “on tour” around England.

The idea was that the same group of judges would adjudicate disputes up and down the country so the law would be “common” with little variation among localities.

Hence the “common law”.

A group of litigation experts began to form around the royal court.

Litigation in those days was mostly oral and conducted in French, which was the official language of England for a long time.

These men – regrettably, all men at the time – spoke for the litigant.

They were “forespeakers” of a litigant, who stood beside him and spoke for him.

They were the forefathers of barristers.

A different group of men would follow the royal court and act on behalf of a litigant in his absence.

This was very useful because the royal court moved around and the litigant might not be in the same place.

These men were “representatives” or “attorneys” for litigants.

They were the forefathers of solicitors.

It was not the case, therefore, that there was a legal profession that “split” into barristers and solicitors. “Forespeakers” and “attorneys” were two groups of people performing different functions, and they developed into the two professions we see today.

Having good advocates is important not only to clients, but also to the courts and to the law.

Photo: Jelly Tse For a long time, one did not become a barrister by studying law at university.

An aspiring barrister would join one of the Inns of Court in London, and spend around seven years visiting the courts, reading and copying books, attending

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