What do barristers wear in court

Until the seventeenth century, lawyers were expected to appear in court with clean, short hair and beards. The judiciary, however, took some time to convince; portraits of judges from the early s still show judges defiantly sporting their own natural hair, and wigs do not seem to have been adopted wholesale until The reign of George III saw wigs gradually go out of fashion. By the end of the century they were mainly worn by bishops, coachmen and the legal profession — and even bishops were given permission to stop wearing wigs in the s.

Judges wore only full-bottomed wigs until the s, when the less formal, and smaller, bob-wig, with frizzed sides rather than curls, and a short tail or queue at the back, was adopted for civil trials. The full-bottomed wig continued to be used for criminal trials until the s, but is today reserved for ceremonial dress; smaller wigs are used on a day-to-day basis. Yes No. Tell us what you were looking for. About the judiciary About the judiciary The judiciary, the government and the constitution The justice system Who are the judiciary?

Breaking the rules? Not that these guidelines made the matter of correct court dress simple. The fashion trends of the 17th century helped judge wigs work their way into courtrooms too and the headpieces were fully adopted as proper legal attire by with just as many strict rules as robes.

Courtroom wigs are white, often handcrafted out of horsehair, and can cost thousands of pounds Judges used to wear long, curled, full-bottom wigs until the s, then they switched to smaller bench wigs. The Wigs And Robes Of Today While a growing number of people feel that the dress code is outdated, traditionalist believes that judge wigs should still be worn to maintain the tradition and to enforce the law.

Whatever the correct name for this little bundle of behaviours, these are important in my book. I always do them and you should too. They protect judges and advocates from accusations of nobbling, they ensure a respectful, orderly court process and they promote good communication.

There are times and places for bands and robes. Who knows? Rules about what buttons to do up and when, seem fortunately to be dead ducks. Also, apparently, never take your jacket off — except when you are in the shower or in the second stage of labour The main thing is definitely never take your jacket off in court unless specifically invited to by the judge.

This only happens if the air conditioning is broken and at least three people have already fainted. Special dispensation for the peri-menopausal ones. Oh, also you should ask permission if you want your client to sit beside you oops. As for standing or sitting, there seems to be some confusion over when advocates should stand when addressing the judge and when they may sit. When I originally wrote the post, I said I thought it was pretty straightforward, but have since been thrown into discombobulation when an out-of-town opponent insisted on standing where I would have sat.

If in doubt, do it standing up. So, bags in court are now pretty routine, even if some still go all twitchy about it. Someone on the thread said that there used to be a no briefcase rule, and I certainly remember when trolley suitcases were positively outre. The rule is apparently that juniors must never use the lecterns, which are reserved for silks. There were very mixed responses on this one — indeed it has been the subject of more than one heated twitter debate.

Suffice to say there are enough very important silks who care about this to make it a dangerous pursuit in some courts! It seems to depend very much on local practice and may depend on whether or not there is a self-important silk in your case or not. There are definitely juniors who use them, though, and one line of thinking is that lecterns or stands of some sort are more commonplace now that many of us work from laptops.

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