President's Message

07/05/2024

The membership of our Association is diverse. Practitioners at the private Bar, Public Defenders, Crown Prosecutors, Judges, Parliamentary Counsel, clerks and academics make up its body. Each of those individuals has a different, and differently demanding, role to discharge in the administration of justice. Yet, even in the agonistic setting of an adversarial system, each of those individuals, if appearing in a Court, shares a basal and primary duty to that Court. At its core, every trial is a cooperative endeavour among its participants to promote the fair and efficient administration of justice in this State.

There has been extensive discussion this year, in various contexts and across various subject-matters, of the conduct of criminal trials in New South Wales. Such trials routinely raise complex legal, practical, and ethical issues for all involved.

To facilitate a cross-profession discussion of some of these issues, the New South Wales Bar Association and the Law Society of New South Wales will jointly host a CPD session on 17 June 2024, at 5.00pm in the Bar Association Common Room, on “The Conduct of Criminal Trials in New South Wales”. It will be a hybrid online and in-person CPD, with a link to follow in InBrief.

I will jointly chair the session with Brett McGrath, President of the Law Society of New South Wales. The speakers will address aspects of the judicial role in criminal trials; legal, ethical, and practical aspects of defence and prosecution advocacy in criminal trials; the prosecutorial independence of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the independence of the judiciary, and how those axiomatic principles intersect.

The speakers and topics are:

• The Hon Justice Sarah Huggett, Chief Judge of the District Court of New South Wales, “Aspects of Adjudication in a Criminal Trial”
• Helen Roberts SC, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, “Aspects of the Role of the ODPP and of a Prosecutor’s Duties”
• Murugan Thangaraj SC, Forbes Chambers, “Aspects of Criminal Defence”
• Georgina Namat, Solicitor Advocate, “Practical Aspects of the Prosecutor’s Role”

I encourage members to attend.