Being prepared and persuasive are the keys to success in the Magistrates Court, the Gold Coast Legal Conference was told on Friday.
That was the message from Chief Magistrate Janelle Brassington, local firm director Ron Behlau and Brisbane barrister Suki Bloom, who presented Effective Advocacy as one of eight sessions at RACV Royal Pines Resort at Benowa.
Chief Magistrate Brassington said an 18-month tenure at Southport Magistrates Court, early in her judicial career, had emphasised the importance of preparedness and persuasion in dealing with the sheer numbers of cases moving through the court.
Ms Bloom said the two concepts were fundamentally linked.
“I have always approached advocacy from the basis that if I am prepared, I will be persuasive,” she said.
“When I look at preparedness, it’s about being master of all things.
“It’s being a master of your client’s antecedents, it’s being a master of the procedural history, being a master of the facts, being a master of the evidence, being a master of the legal principles, being a master of the sentencing structure – because if you are a master of these things, you will be persuasive.”
Mr Behlau said a practitioner could not be one without the other.
“Magistrates Court is where most of Queensland’s justice is distributed. It’s where most advocates either gain or lose their reputation. It’s a court of volume, high pressure and split-second decisions, and to be effective you need to be prepared, and you need to be persuasive,” he said.
He said an important part of being prepared was to know the magistrate.
“Some prefer brevity, some prefer long, detailed submissions, some have firm views about things,” he said.
“Relish any opportunity to watch the magistrate before you appear before them. It’s not gamesmanship, its actually professional courtesy.”
The panellists addressed bail applications, adjudications, callovers and sentencing.
On callovers, Chief Magistrate Brassington said the complexity of evidence and the time taken to obtain it was placing pressure on the system.
She said asking for a longer adjournment was “really good practice”.
“It is much better having a two-month adjournment and moving forward to some sort of resolution than mentioning it (the matter) every two to three weeks. That just increases numbers, the level of frustration for everyone – we’re not really achieving anything,” she said.
She also recommended practitioners looked at ways to “move the machinery without having to come to court”, such as the use of an audio-visual link.
Panel chair Erin Mitchell, from Potts Lawyers, said it was important for advocates to listen to what was going on in a callover.
“If you are sitting in, or listening on the phone, it can be very tempting to multi-task but the importance of listening to what the bench is saying to previous mentions … that can go a long way in taking note of when the calendars are out to, or the magistrate’s attitude to a very similar application for an adjournment,” Ms Mitchell said.
“I can imagine it must be quite frustrating when they have to regurgitate the information that they’ve just provided.”
On sentencing, Chief Magistrate Brassington encouraged advocates to focus on what was relevant, to help the court.
“The most persuasive advocates …they are essentially writing the judgment for the court in their submissions,” she said.
“They are saying: ‘this is the appropriate sentence. It’s appropriate because of these reasons. It achieves the purpose of the sentence. It will act as a true deterrent because of this. It is a just sentence for this reason’.
“The advocate is essentially addressing the points that any magistrate must, under law, touch upon when they’re fixing sentence, and giving them essentially, the answer.”
The full-day conference covered a range of other topics including professional courtesy, neurodivergence in the profession, off-the-plan contracts, AI, stress management and self-care.
Keep an eye on Proctor for more photos from the event.
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