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Public concern has been generated by a recently reported situation of a retired judge joining a law firm soon after retirement from the Bench. The Bar Council has received queries from members of the Bar enquiring about the desirability or otherwise of the same.

There are currently no legislation or code of conduct that regulates the professional or commercial activities of judges after retirement. Previously very few judges would practise law after retirement. In recent years, however, there has been an increase in the number of retired judges desiring to join the Bar. The issue has thus become a pressing one to be addressed by the Bar.

When a judge retires and soon after joins a law firm, an area of serious concern that immediately presents itself is the perception that an offer to do so might have been made to the judge before his retirement, and discussions or negotiations on the same might have started or taken place while the judge was still serving on the Bench; particularly if there is a short time lapse between the judge's retirement and his joining the firm. This in turn gives rise to the question whether the independence of the judge could have in any way been influenced or compromised by the making of such an offer or the holding of such a discussion. Such an adverse perception cannot be ignored, especially if there are other allegations which deserve further inquiry.

However, whether or not in any particular instance there is in fact any truth in the surmises of the nature described above is immaterial to a consideration of the larger principle that, not only must the independence of the judiciary be in fact not compromised, there must also not be any appearance of the possibility that such independence could have been compromised.

In protection of that principle, and after examining the experience of other jurisdictions, the Bar Council is of the view that there ought to be a lapse of a suitable period of time (which is often called a 'cooling off' period) after a judge's retirement before he may be permitted to practise law at the Bar. The Bar Council will be studying the detailed aspects of this issue, with the view of formulating and forwarding a proposal to the Chief Justice and the Government in the near future to introduce a new provision to regulate the professional and commercial activities of retired judges.

Dated this 6th day of June 2003.

Haji Kuthubul Zaman Bukhari
Chairman
Bar Council