Working in the Legal Profession in Jersey
By Advocate Charles Thacker, Senior Partner, Viberts
The legal profession offers excellent opportunities for a fulfilling career in Jersey. The emergence of financial services as such an important part of the island’s economy has brought an abundance of work for the lawyers, and the need to liaise with similar professionals in other jurisdictions, from neighbouring Guernsey and London to the Caribbean, has led to the expansion of several Jersey law firms to become internationally known and respected organisations with offices thousands of miles apart.
The spokesman for the legal community in Jersey is Advocate Charles Thacker, senior partner at Vibert’s and president of the Law Society. He gives us some fundamental information on this area of work:
’The classical route to qualification is to take a law degree and then to complete the professional qualification, either being called to the bar in England or completing the Legal Practice course of the English Law Society, applying to have exemptions from the first part of the exam for the admission of advocates and ecrivains. Then you would move on to the second part, which is essentially looking at the law in Jersey and therefore does require separate study. It isn’t, however, a hard and fast requirement: quite a number of people take a degree in another subject and then do a conversion course to law.
’Jersey law has a number of sources, one of which is the law of Normandy as it was before the separation of the Channel Islands from Normandy in 1204. The law of Normandy advanced somewhat after that date and for a long time Jersey kept up with it and gradually absorbed the changes into its own law and practice. That continued until the French Revolution, when Norman law as such disappeared in France. Since then the more dominant influence on Jersey law has been English law, but you find that in some areas there is a reliance on the old Norman law, particularly property matters and the law of succession and in other areas such as divorce and crime, the predominant influence is English law. That is also true of many areas of administrative law, which has developed relatively recently. For example, you wouldn’t have found planning laws in the 18th or 19th centuries. There are other areas of law where it has developed by way of statutes and Jersey has tended to adopt these statutes, with some modifications to suit the conditions of the island.’
About 30 people enter the legal profession in Jersey each year, and Advocate Thacker explains the various routes.
’Quite a lot of people start off doing something else and then switch to law part of the way through their university course and do a conversion course, but I think the majority decide when they’re at school that they want to pursue a career in law.
’An English lawyer wanting to become a Jersey advocate would have to take the local legal exams, which most people find takes between 18 months and three years, but they’re not able to study as their main occupation, which of course university students do – they spend their weeks working for their firm, and have to study in their own time.’
Unlike their Guernsey counterparts, Jersey’s potential advocates don’t have to spend six months at Caen in Normandy, although those who elect to do so can obtain certain exemptions from the Jersey exam.
Because Jersey has such strong historical links with France – including its own version of the language – advocates and ecrivains do have to get to grips with French from time to time – and not the modern conversational kind. Certain authoritative textbooks from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries are written in very archaic language, and lawyers have to work out exactly what is being said in them.
But then, as Advocate Thacker sums up, ’To work in this field you need an aptitude for dealing with rather complex documentation and being able to explain it in straightforward, everyday terms to the people who are going to have to put their signatures to the documentation. You also need the ability to master and, to an extent, memorise complex legal and factual issues at relatively short notice. That is the predominant requirement nowadays, whereas in the past there was a lot of court work involved and you would have needed an aptitude for that.’