ORAL HISTORIES
Barrister shapes history of profession LINDY MCNAMARA
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losely related to the Barr Smith and Elders families, Christopher Legoe AO QC has a strong connection to the early history of South Australia. He also helped shape the history of the legal profession in the State when he took the bold step to become the first person to officially practise only as a barrister. It was the early 1950s when Mr Legoe returned from England after completing law studies at the University of Cambridge. He was admitted to the English Bar in 1951 and after arriving back in South Australia took up a job as an Associate to Sir Geoffrey Reed, one of the senior Judges on the Supreme Court. “He (Reed) had gone out on his own in the 1930s and did only court work, and he was in effect really the first one to practise as a barrister only in South Australia. But it’s never been recognised,” Mr Legoe explained during an interview as part of the Law Foundation’s Oral History project. “That year Sir Geoffrey Reed and I went on circuit, I got on very well with him and he encouraged me to think about doing court work. He didn’t specifically say, ‘Go out on your own’, because nobody ever thought of it in those days.” However, after much consideration, discussion and consultation with family members, in 1955 Mr Legoe wrote a letter to the Law Society President Frank Piper QC indicating he wanted to set up practise solely as a barrister. “My first brief was an all-day sucker! I had a little room. Bob Fisher’s father was a friend of my father, and Bob said, ‘Look, we’ve got a room on the third floor of Epworth Building that we can rent to you’. “I didn’t have many law books or anything, but I started there, and Bob used to send me a few small briefs up to the Stirling Court – he lived in the Hills, and he’d get a few small things. “And, then the Bednalls – Maurice Bednall, who’s the father, and David Bednall, the son – they were on the
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second floor I think of Epworth, and they started briefing me. And, then a few other small solicitors started briefing afterwards.” Mr Legoe’s move was the hot topic of conversation in legal circles, so much so that in 1959 then Law Society President, David Hogarth, called a meeting to allow Members to debate the merits of a divided profession.
“I was still the only one who was practising only as a barrister. David called a meeting of the Law Society, a general meeting for discussion as to whether the profession should divide, separately, like in New South Wales and Queensland, by Act of Parliament. “Victoria has never had an Act of Parliament separating it professionally, they did it voluntarily way back in the 1880s,
