Prizes of the Legal Profession.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7765, 17 March 1905, Page 4

Prizes of the Legal Profession.

•Mr H. L. Lucy writes In III? Sydney Morning Herald : " Sir Edward i Clarko so'm- time a;-;'o ilec.liiiv.l U.v jprofleivd AUormry-OeneraMbip on the plea that it was not, worth tlu while of a bat.sister in large practice to i accept it on eoli litiim, newly onforoed. that he should not accept In' 's froiu the public. The salary of the |Attorney-General is JL7, I HHI, the Soli-dtor-Ger.-'ral licim? paid J-I ; Hl'i year less. That should certainly fall short <>f the average * a riiill- -oi a man holding Sir Edward Clarke's • plare at t h' Hat-. Gradually, howev- j er, things have lighted themselves. ; There has grown up and extended ' the practice of exacting fees for oth- j er than routine work common to the Law Ofllce. A return just made to the House of Commons of payments made to Sir Robert Finlay, Attor-ney-General, ami to Sir Edward Garson, Solicitor-Genera';. shows that .their fees considerably exceed 4,heir official saltirief*, During the last financial year the Attorney-General ,drew in fees the quaintly precise sum I lof 7s ltd. Ihe Solicitor-Gen-eral fobbed 9d less than £7069. The total income of the head of the English Jlar thus worked out to £lO,921 7s 9d, his colleague pocketing £1 :i,0.->8 19s -'>iJ. These incomes compare with the £..,000 a year, the maximum salary of a Cabinet Minister, and more closely witli the £lO,000 drawn by Lord llalsbttry in his dual capacity oi 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 thai tinds no parallel in the oast! of his legal colleagues ol' j lower professional rank."