Beware the rule of lawyers!

In my youth, said his father, I took to the law
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Don’t look now but gangs of muscle-jawed lawyers long ago left the law, took to politics and have run the country for the past 14 years.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, a former solicitor, is the new leader of the current legal gang-in-government.

Never mind that Australia has its first female Prime Minister. More ominously, Julia Gillard is the 12th lawyer to lead the nation. And, if Labor should lose the impending election, Tony Abbott will become our 13th lawyer-PM.

Almost half of Australia’s 27 Prime Ministers have been lawyers. John Howard, Bob Hawke and Gough Whitlam are lawyers. Earlier lawyers-in-the-lodge were Sir William McMahon, Harold Holt and Sir Robert Menzies.

Others who brought legal qualifications to the top job were Sir Edmund Barton, Alfred Deakin, John Watson, William Hughes and Stanley Bruce.

Ms Gillard says her leadership will be more inclusive with cabinet colleagues consulted, respected, appreciated and understood. Don’t look now, but ten out of 28 players in her reshuffled ministerial team are also legal eagles: Simon Crean, Stephen Smith, Nicola Roxson, Lindsay Tanner, Peter Garrett, Robert McClelland, Tony Bourke, Brendan O’Connor and Senators Penny Wong and Joseph Ludwig. Interestingly, all of these (and Ms Gillard) were chosen by the former PM Kevin Rudd - a non-lawyer.

But wait, more lawyers (17 out of 33) lurk in the shadow ministry:

Tony Abbott, Julie Bishop, Eric Abetz, Joe Hockey, Christopher Pyne, Kevin Andrews, Greg Hunt, Sophie Mirabella, Philip Ruddock, Bronwyn Bishop, Steven Ciobo and Senators George Brandis, David Johnston, Michael Ronaldson, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Marise Payne and Mathias Cormann.

Lawyers have traditionally been the largest professional sub-group not only in the federal cabinet but also in the parliament. While our first Prime Minister in 1901 was a lawyer, so were 27 per cent of members and senators in the first parliament. The present parliament may well have its highest complement of lawyers since federation: 59 out of 150 members in the House of Representatives and 32 out of 76 senators. That’s a whopping 40 per cent of the whole legislature! No wonder lawyers rule in both the Gillard and Abbott teams, although the numbers look modest compared with the lawyer-laden Howard ministries.

So many lawyers in politics is a phenomenon going back a long way: there were 40 lawyers in the English Parliament of 1422, 60 in the House of Commons in 1593, 75 in the Lang Parliament of 1640 and so on.

Why the preponderance, if not dominance, of lawyers in politics? It may be that, when so much political debate is about laws and law-making, lawyers make natural politicians. As a direct result lawyers have frequently become political leaders. Several post-war opposition leaders, who never reached the Lodge were also lawyers: Dr H.V. Evatt, Andrew Peacock, Billy Sneddon, Simon Crean and Malcolm Turnbull.

It goes without saying that the major political parties have always considered their legally qualified members to be suitable election candidates. Of course, as the old joke goes, no matter who you vote for - a politician always gets elected. But what if the pollie is also a lawyer?

Shadow-lawyer-minister Joe Hockey once confirmed to Lawyers Weekly the overlap in legal and political skills: “The legal profession involves analysis of legislation and the understanding of policy. These are very similar things to what MPs have to deal with. The debating skills of a barrister are also very similar to the work of a parliamentarian.”

Former senator and solicitor, Amanda Vanstone, also told Lawyers Weekly that a “sense of justice” drew lawyers into politics: “Law gives you a sense of fairness and equity”. She also said that the result of studying, if not also practicing, law meant “well-developed concepts in marshalling the arguments one way or the other”.

“Lateral thinker” Edward De Bono in the meantime told university academics to stop acting and thinking like lawyers. To be open to more constructive problem-solving, he said, they should move beyond “adversary lawyer-style of thinking”. He called this “old-style of thinking” - analysis, argument and counter-argument. The rigidity of logical legal thinking, he claimed, failed to allow for new possibilities or outcomes.

Although Ms Gillard and most of her lawyer-ministers were solicitors or barristers before entering politics, few have recent legal experience. Some with legal qualifications never practiced law. Nevertheless, while no longer arguing youthful legal points with their spouses, they bring the benefits of legal training and a resultant “lawyer-style of thinking” into both cabinet-room deliberations and into their ministerial portfolios. All will have a measure of the legal mind-set described by De Bono as “analysis and judgment … fine-tuning and juggling with existing concepts”. As will Mr Abbot and his legal shadow-cabinet-colleagues should they become the next government.

But wait, a legal academic has warned that legally trained people can use “traditional legal skills to justify actions”. Lawyers familiar with what he terms “the disorder of law” can also make the law “a fertile field for the justification of even the most radical actions”. Once the election is called, then look out for radical promises from both teams on such issues as taxation, health, climate change and asylum-seekers.

Ms Gillard, with a well-honed combination of political spin and legal skill, justified the removal “in the national interest” of a first-term, first-time prime minister. She then vindicated her government’s remodelling, through speedy negotiation with the miners, of the Rudd government’s proposed resource super-profits tax. You see, as she said, she just had to step in and replace the leader because “a good government was losing its way”.

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” was one of Shakespeare’s characters’ guide to good government. Philosopher Edmund Burke’s approach was more civilised: “I wish the country to be governed by law, not by lawyers.” It may be too late for Burke’s prophetic sentiment to apply in Canberra - with a ministry one-third full of lawyers and a lawyer-politician captaining the team, not to mention a lawyer-loaded alternative government.