COURT PUBLICITY

Southland Times, Issue 21835, 12 October 1932, Page 9

COURT PUBLICITY

PRSSS AND LAW SOCIETY.

We have decided to resume where the circumstances seem to warrant it, the practice of publishing the names of counsel in our reports of proceedings in the courts. As the suspension of this publication excited a good deal of interest and curiosity, an explanation may now be given to the public of the cause of it.

The decision by the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association that the names of counsel should be omitted from the reports of judicial proceedings followed a memorandum of July 22, 1931, of a joint arrangement between the president of the Law Society and the Public Trustee and issued by the Law Society to its branches. Exception was taken by the newspapers to clauses 1 and 2 of the memorandum, which read as follows:—

1. Complete cessation from newspaper and journal advertising by the Public Trust Office and the legal profession immediately existing contracts expire. Advantage is to be taken of any clauses in existing contracts which enable the advertiser to cancel at an early date, without financial sacrifice. 2. The New Zealand Law Society is to make an effort to induce the Guardian Trust and Executor Co. of New Zealand, Ltd., Auckland, New Zealand Insurance Company, Ltd., Auckland, Perpetual Trustees and Agency Co. of New Zealand, Ltd.. Dunedin, Trustees, Executors and Agency Co. of New Zealand, Ltd., Dunedin, to fall into line by discontinuing all advertising contracts immediately they expire and to cease all newspaper and journal advertising. It was felt by the newspaper managements that this was a direct and unwarranted attack on their business, and it was decided in consequence that the courtesy that had been extended to the profession by the publication of Ae names of its members engaged in Court cases should be withdrawn. The reputations of lawyers practising at the Bar have been immensely assisted by the free advertising which they thus enjoyed. It was not the intention permanently to penalize practitioners, especially ybung barristers with reputations still to make, by arbitrarily maintaining the withdrawal of the privilege so long conceded to them. At a meeting in Wellington at the end of September of members of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association it was resolved—“ That . in the event of a satisfactory letter being received from the Law Society expressing its intention to regard clause 2 as a ‘dead letter,’ the matter be dropped.” This decision was conveyed in a letter to the president of the Law Society, who replied: “I have to thank you for your letter of even date, and to say, in reply, that an arrangement has been made with the Public Trustee whereby clause 2 of the agreement between the Public Trustee and the New Zealand Law Society is to be regarded as inoperative, and may therefore be treated as a ‘dead letter.’ ”