The rewards of long service

June 23rd : in the grandeur of HKU’s Loke Yew Hall, scene of concerts, conferences and examinations, presentations are made to a dozen long-term employees of the university. Among them is my colleague and fellow LexNex author Michael Wilkinson.

Michael is actually now well into his 26th year of service but the 25 years that he clocked up last autumn were being marked, along with those of fourteen others of similar vintage. Ever the entertainer, he pretended to stumble from old age as he went up to receive his pen (or was it a watch?) from the vice-chancellor. There was a good turnout from his colleagues and lots of photos.

Although a comparative junior in both age and service, I had already been in post for more than two years when Wilko arrived from Africa with his tennis racquet and football boots. That was in September 1983. He was greeted by typhoon Ellen, one of the most destructive storms to strike Hong Kong in living memory. We had to reassure him that such weather was not normal.

Since then there has been a quarter-century of relentless teaching and writing, and appointment to a personal professorship, for Michael. He has been head of the Department of Professional Legal Education for many years and its life and soul both before and since. His devotion to the students is as legendary as his jokes.

Since retirement is anathema to him, Michael is ploughing on, fulfilling a number of roles within the faculty, the university and the profession. He is on his second extension beyond HKU’s retirement age and recently became university orator, a position which has required him to say sweet things about Bill Clinton, amongst others.

At the long-service ceremony there were three further awards to those who had managed 35 years’ service. Michael can have received only encouragement from this.

In Dublin’s fair city the prices are pretty

Our annual visit to England usually involves lots of motoring which is rather tedious since taitai doesn’t drive (except from the back seat) and therefore I don’t get to see the scenery. So this time we thought we’d use the train as much as possible. That gave rise to the idea of a side trip to Dublin, somewhere we’d been meaning to go to for ages.

The budget airlines, we discovered, are not as budgety as their propaganda suggests: a one-way ticket advertised online at 54 euros became more than double that once the extras were added on. You have bags? That will be 19 euros apiece. Want to reserve your seats? You’ll have to pay for the privilege. Using a credit card? There will be an administrative fee. Paying in HK dollars? We have a special exchange rate.

So we tried the boat train instead, at about half the cost of an air ticket. It’s not that much longer than flying either, once you take everything into account, and the journey is far more relaxed and interesting. Seasickness is not such a factor these days on a giant modern ferry, although as it happens the Irish Sea was kind to us in both directions.

Guided by Fergal Sweeney who left the Hong Kong district court bench four years ago to resume practice at the Dublin bar, we stayed in elegant inner south Dublin. There the Georgian buildings are preserved, saved from destruction by the Republic of Ireland’s neutrality in the Second World War and its status as a backwater thereafter. By the coming of the Celtic tiger in the closing years of the last century, sensitive planning laws had protected Dublin’s heritage and kept it a visual delight for visitors.

My father, who travelled to Ireland three times a year on business, used to say that Dublin was the friendliest of cities. The tiger mentality may have affected that: we couldn’t really tell since most of the staff at the hotel, and most of the people on the streets of the city centre, seemed to be from elsewhere in Europe. Fergal and his wife Mary (who studied at HKU) were however hospitality personified at their large Edwardian house next to the golf course in the seaside resort of Greystones to the south of Dublin.

They bought the house in the mid-1990s, before property prices went mad there. Judging from a random inspection of estate agency windows, the prices are still mad, rivalling those of Hong Kong. One wonders how ordinary people can live in Ireland, for the prices in the shops seemed higher than those in London, even after the spectacular discounts offered on some items.

Fergal, like Michael Wilkinson with whom he used to play soccer, has now hung up his boots but retains a dodgy knee and a fragile shoulder as reminders of his sporting days. He goes to town two or three times a week to collect the odd brief from the law library, from which Dublin barristers practice, to supplement the judicial pension.

Mary, meanwhile, has maintained Hong Kong habits to the extent of holding down two jobs, one of which is to teach East Asian studies. This means she is aware of events in Hong Kong and keen to learn more.

The days of the Celtic tiger are truly over. International companies, previously attracted to Ireland by its low costs, low tax and boom economy, are looking to eastern Europe. Shackled by the Euro, the republic cannot adopt British tactics of devaluation and zero interest rates. The only course is that followed by Hong Kong after 1997 of deflation and recession. A visit to Dublin may be better value next year.

Common legal experience: too many lawyers, too much paper

The Irish republic with 4 million-odd people is, like Hong Kong, a small jurisdiction. It shares with us the designation of a common law jurisdiction which is not within the Commonwealth.

Another common factor is rapid expansion of the legal profession. There is now, for instance, six times the number of barristers then there were when Fergal left Dublin in the 1980s.

Fergal took us to the Four Courts building, Dublin’s long-time palace of justice. It’s far more elegant, though one suspects slightly less functional, than our own upended matchbox in Queensway. Under the central cupola the barristers mix with solicitors and clients, negotiate settlements and exchange gossip.

No sign of pressure there but in the adjacent law library overcrowding is obvious. Each barrister has a small space on the long bench tables, barely sufficient for one file and a couple of books. Outside the library entrance are a few cubicles for conferences, much in demand. It saves on rent of course but hardly makes for comfort and contemplation. Some of the more successful counsel have set up chambers nearby; others work mainly from home, using the library as a document delivery centre.

A few years ago when the Hong Kong Bar experienced a similar expansion, a library system on the Dublin model was proposed for new practitioners. At the time, many of us thought it would not work because the chambers system was entrenched: those practicing from the library would be regarded as poor relations. I think still that was right but the Dublin experience suggests another objection, that despite (perhaps because of) computers, modern legal practice involves lots of paper and therefore requires space.

Malcolm Merry is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong and a Hong Kong barrister. He is the author of Hong Kong Tenancy Law (4th ed, LexisNexis 2003) and co-author (with Paul Kent) of Building Management in Hong Kong (2nd ed, LexisNexis 2008).