This article will provide a brief introduction of the litigation lawyers including the solicitor and barrister in Hong Kong legal system.
Barrister, a Stream of the Litigation Lawyer in Hong Kong
Barrister is one of two streams of lawyers (the other is solicitor) under Hong Kong legal system. Barrister have right of audience to attend court hearing at all levels of the Hong Kong courts while solicitor’s right of audience to attend court hearing is limited to the District Court and chamber hearing at the High Court. Barristers are also know as Big Lawyer （大状）or counsel. In principle, Barristers are not directly employed by the lay client, but they are “instructed” to work by the solicitor whom the lay client engage. Barrister provides their legal service on their only account independeantly unlike solicitors who usually provide their legal service in the form of a solicitors firm. Barrister may assist solicitors in appearing court hearing and provide legal advice on complicated issues.
Solicitor Advocate
In Hong Kong, traditionally solicitors have no right of audience in the High Court and the Court of Final Appeal. If the parties need to litigate in the above-mentioned courts, they must be presented by barristers who are instructed by the their solicitors. Starting from 2013, according to the “Legal Practitioners (Amendment) Bill 2009”, solicitors who meet the requirements of a certain number of years of practice (over 5 years) can seek to be approved as Soicitor Advocate and can appear in the High Court and the Court of Final Appeal to obtain The same right of audience as barristers. The remaining difference is that even if they obtain the right to appear in the High Court and the Court of Final Appeal, solicitors are not allowed to wear wigs like barrister when appearing in the High Court and the Court of Final Appeal. This is different from the United Kingdom: British solicitors can wear a wig like a barrister when they obtain the right to appear in court similar to that of a barrister.
Solicitors in the Practice of Litigation
Under the Hong Kong legal system, solicitors are allowed to have a wide arrange of practice including but not limited to litigation. If the client have any litigation matters to seek legal representation, the lay client need engage a solicitor in the pracitce of litigation to represent. The representing solicitors will be recorded on the court files as the party’s legal representative. The representing solicitor will have overall responsiblity over the handling of the case. If the solicitors, in the process of the handling the case, need assistance from a barrister (such as attending court hearing, draft pleading documents, providing advice on certain matter), the solicitors will instruct a barrister to assist in the handling of the case after obtaining the lay client’s approval. The barrister’s fee will be paid by the instructing solicitor who, in return, will have the barrister’s fee reimbursed from the lay client.
Legal Costs Charged by Litigation Solicitors and Barrister
The usually practice for legal costs charged by solicitors are on hourly basis. For legal costs charged by barrister, it is usually a conbimation of fixed fee and hourly rate fee. To be specific, for attending a certain court hearing, the barrister often quote a fee of fixed amount for attending the first-day hearing (the legal term is a “brief”) and another fixed fee for attending each day hearing after the first day (the legal term is a “refresher”). The refresher usually is lower than the brief, such as a half of the brief. For example, if the barrister’s hourly rate is HKD 5,000, and he estimate that he will need 20 hours for preparing a hearing and 3 hours for attending the first-time hearing, he may quote a fixed fee of HKD 115,000 (being 23-hour work) for his brief, and he may quote, eg. HKD 60,000 for an adjuourned hearing after the first-day hearing if he expect that he will spent much less time on preparing for adjourned hearing.
For any issue regarding litigation in Hong Kong, you are welcome to call our litigation team of YAN Lawyers for a consultation.