A year ago, I heard my name read out as a member of the Bar in Ghana.
Twelve months in the Court of Appeal, the High Court and the Circuit Court have since taught me more than the long years of preparation that came before.
What follows is what I have learnt, written for myself and for the lawyers who will be called this Friday.
What the Rules Do Not Tell You
The rules of procedure give a court its skeleton, but the room has a living body. Judges have habits and registries have rhythms. A motion flawless on paper can still lose a day because service never reached the other side. I confirm the cause list the day before and carry spare copies. The lawyers I admire most are rarely the loudest in court. They go about their work diligently and calmly.
Moving between the High Court and the Circuit Court almost every other day has shown me they reward different instincts. The High Court wants authority and tidy bundles. The Circuit Court, particularly in family matters, sits closer to the people whose lives are in the balance, and a petitioner in a matrimonial cause wants to know when it will end.
The Long Wait for Justice
Nobody warns you how much of litigation is waiting. The other party has not been served, and a date three months away is announced as though it were good news. Clients do not understand this, and I no longer blame them. We share the blame for our adjournment culture whenever we ask for time we do not truly need. I mean to be ready on the day and to tell clients the truth about delay early.
The First Monday
Everything I believe about this work traces back to one morning. The call to the Bar is a day of gowns, photographs and relatives who have waited years to hear your name. What I remember is the telephone call that evening, when my senior told me to be at a Circuit Court on Monday. A judgment was due in one of his matters, and he wanted me there- alone.
Nobody hands a lawyer of three days anything to argue on judgment day, yet I walked in as though the whole building had come to watch me. I took a seat at the bar and opened a new notebook. Then the judge began to read. I had read hundreds of judgments on paper and never once listened to one. I wrote furiously, because my senior would plan his next move from my notes. That Monday taught me what the profession expects first of a junior: to hear correctly and report faithfully.
Standing Up to Speak
My first time on my feet alone to move a motion was an application for substituted service. I rehearsed for two days and still stumbled over the opening sentence. The judge waited, not unkindly, and asked a question that cut through it all: what exactly did I want the court to do, and why could the other side not be served in the ordinary way? I told the court, and the rest came easily. If you cannot state your application in two sentences, you do not yet understand it.
Before the Three Pillars of Justice
The Court of Appeal is another world. The room is quieter and the questions come from three directions at once. On appeal you argue about whether the law was rightly applied, before a panel that has usually read the record more closely than you would like. On one occasion I went alone to hear judgment before the three pillars of Justice, thought of that first Monday, and was conscious of the distance.
Building Before Earning
Money is not a dirty word at the Bar. Rent has to be paid, and a junior who pretends otherwise is either supported by someone else or is not honest. But a lawyer chasing the quickest fee will pay for it later. The brief that pays fast often teaches nothing, and the junior who takes every matter, soon learns how expensive cheap money can be.
The early years are an apprenticeship. Every hour in court behind a senior and every draft returned covered in corrections is training no tuition could buy. The Bar has its shortcuts; undercutting colleagues, accepting matters beyond your competence, promising results no honest lawyer can promise. Each spends reputation, which a young practitioner cannot buy back. Take the money you are fairly owed, and do not let it become the reason you stopped learning.
The Other Desk
Alongside the practice, I have kept up my passion for writing articles, mostly on football, and the two have competed for the same hours. A hearing in the morning and a piece due by evening looks manageable in a diary and feels different at half past ten at night.
The law is a jealous profession, and no deadline is a good reason to walk into court half-prepared, so the days belong to the practice and the writing takes what the nights will give. Yet I would not give up either. Writing has made me clearer in submissions, and court has made me wary of publishing any claim I could not defend.
What I Take With Me
The profession is smaller than it looks. The opponent who frustrates you today will be the colleague you need next month, and the clerk or bailiff who sees your manners will remember them. Be courteous without being soft, and never tell a court anything you would be embarrassed to defend. Credibility is the only capital a young lawyer truly owns.
I owe much to my seniors, my brother Andrew Khartey and Elikem Adisenu-Doe, who let me watch before they let me speak, and who corrected me in private and praised me in front of others. Having been taught that way, I intend to teach that way. I am not yet the lawyer I mean to become, but I know what the work demands: preparation no one sees, honesty that costs something, and patience. The Monday after my call was a quiet beginning, and I am grateful it began with listening.
A Word to the Newly Called
Congratulations to the 1400 to be called to the Bar on Friday, especially my cousin David Andreas Hesse Jnr and my friends Samuel Kyeremeh, Daisy Hanson-Nortey and Anne Adjasah. The years of study and the sacrifices of the family members who will fill the auditorium all arrive at a single morning, and you have earned every minute of it.
Enjoy it, and thank the people who carried you here. Then on Monday, go and find a courtroom, sit behind someone who knows more than you do, and listen. Be patient with the money and serious about the law, and the profession will repay you in ways a quick fee never could. Welcome to the Bar.
BY: JOSEPH OKAN-MENSAH KHARTEY; ASSOCIATE, AFRIMORE ADVISORS PRUC
