Barrister Function in Irish Legal System

Barristers are trained more thoroughly in advocacy, the rules of the various courts, court procedure and paperwork. Solicitors have a right of audience but they’re better suited to general advisory matters and dealing directly with clients.

Not a great analogy but most doctors can technically perform surgical procedures with their qualifications, but you tend to hire a fully specialized surgeon to do an operation because that’s what they’re better at.

In the UK solicitors can gain right of audience through a system where they train as solicitor advocates and that actually had a big impact on how legal services were delivered over there.

In ireland the courts just granted audience at one point. It meant no one really expanded their practice because they weren't sure how to.

Solicitors get virtually no training on the law of evidence or the rules of court, so most of us would definitely be acting out of our scope of knowledge if we actually tried to go into courtroom advocacy.

Now if only there was a sort of society which dealt with legal training for the solicitors profession. Some sort of society about law that we all had to pay into every year. But what would we even call such a thing?

I always describe it as like the difference between GPs and consultants.

Your GP can do a general diagnosis, and can help with most things. If they feel you need the assistance of a specialist, they'll put you in touch with the correct person.

Solicitors kind of do the same with the assistance of barristers.

Solicitor tell you what you can do. Barrister tells you how to do it.

Barrister does most of the legal work and the solicitor takes the credit

From what I understand, barristers are more like "specialists" than "all-rounders" like solicitors are. So you might have a barrister who specialises in, say, aeronautical law, but you wouldn't really get a solicitor who would do the same.

Likewise, a solicitor may not know 100% about making submissions to the court in, say, a personal injury case so they'll draft pleadings then send them to their barrister to check. Things like that I think