Legal Earning.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 206, 3 September 1904, Page 4

Legal Earning.

Sir Edward Clarke some years ago declined the proffered British Attor-ney-Generalship, on the plea that it was not worth the while of a barrister in large practice to accept it on the condition, newly enforced, that he should not accept briefs from the public. The salary of the AttorneyGeneral is £7OOO, the Solicitor-Gen-eral ibeing paid £IOOO a year less-. That would certainly faU ;ho t of the average earnings of . luai. holding Sir Edward Clarke's place .a the tar. Gradually, however, things have righted themselves. There has grown up the extended practice of exacting fees for other than routine work common to the Law Office. A .return just made to the House of Commons of payments made to Sir Robert Finlay, Attorney-General, and Sir Edward Carson, SolicitorGeneral, show that their fees considerably exceed their official salaries. During the last financial year the Attorney-General drew in fees the guaiintly-precisc sum of £12,921 7s 9d. The Solicitor-General fobbed 3d less than £7069. The total income of the head of- the English Bar thus .worked out to £19,921 7s 9d, bis colleague pocketing £13,058 19s 3d. These incomes compare with the £SOOO a year, the maximum salary of a Cabinet Minister, and more closely with the £1.0,000 a year drawn by Lord Halsbury in bis dual capacity of Lord Chancellor and Speaker of the House of Lords. The latter work does not come to much. But the Lord Chancellor sits daily through a considerable portion of the year in the Court of Appeal, drudgery that finds no parallel in the case of his legal colleagues of | lower professional nank.