Beware the rule of lawyers!

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.