1
2 -
(ii) the increase in the size and sophistication of society and of work in Hong Kong has led not merely to a larger workload but also to one of more innate complexity and difficulty; this in turn has led to a disproportionate requirement in the recent past (which will continue over the next few years) both for persons suitable for promotion and capable of doing the more difficult and specialised work; but (bearing in mind the general policy to recruit only at the bottom level) the choice increasingly often lies between promoting either able Counsel who are young and so less mature and experienced or those who whilst older have less innate ability and would not have achieved such promotion had the size of Chambers not continually enlarged. The only alternative is to increase salaries and conditions sufficiently to attract able and mature practitioners from the private sector either here or abroad for recruitment into some of the promotion posts, and in my opinion this is now essential.
(iii) conditions of service, affecting as they do the wives of junior officers, seem sometimes positively designed to drive them away; as one very able recently- resigned Senior Crown Counsel wrote to me, explaining why he was leaving despite loving his work:
"the prospect of returning to Hong Kong for another tour never arose; my wife just would not spend once again 3 months (and perhaps 6 months) in a hotel with the children (aged 4, 7 and 9) awaiting the allocation of quarters, nor would she spend 22 years again away from our relations and friends."
(iv) this dilution of talent over the years is aggravated by the inevitable desire of many able lawyers to enter the Judiciary where (a) the retirement age is up to 10 years older than in the general service, and (b) the number of posts at the higher financial levels is so much greater, so that promotion is easier (there are 6 PCC i.e. Deputy Law Officers compared with 20 District Court Judges on the same salary; 3 Law Officers compared with 21 High Court Judges who earn more and retire later; one AG and one CJ, though the latter retires later and earns more).