In praise of registrars: the quiet, overlooked and resilient heart of our courts

Samira Taghavi

A few weeks ago, I stood in a busy courtroom and, like nearly every other lawyer, waited patiently while the registrar worked through her long list of defendants.

After a relatively short time, a visibly frustrated practitioner strode up to the registrar’s desk and sharply demanded to know whether she knew who he was, because he had been waiting far too long for his case to be called.

As he spoke, he repeatedly circled his client’s name on the desk copy of the day’s court list with his pen – as if doing so might somehow hasten his turn.

He did not disguise his contempt for this troublesome minion. Yet the registrar remained calm, polite and professional. She never lost her composure and instead simply carried on doing her job.

I wish I could say that this lawyer’s impoliteness was an isolated lapse, but in my experience, that isn’t the case.

Managing delay

Registrars absorb exasperation for problems they do not create. Though they do not decide how many matters are placed on a criminal “first-call” list, they far too often become the face of the frustrations over this and other problems that beset the system.

Seeing a registrar spoken to with impatience, dismissiveness or disrespect by counsel genuinely breaks my heart because I know the people sitting behind those desks are almost certainly doing everything within their power to help.

Registrars do not create delay; they manage it. They are not responsible for a hearing that has taken longer than expected, a prisoner transport that has arrived late or an interpreter delayed in another courtroom. They inherit those challenges and spend the entire day keeping the machine moving.

In that furious circle-drawing moment, I was also embarrassed as a member of the profession and was reminded that we spend so much time focusing on judges, cases and outcomes that we sometimes forget the people who quietly make the entire system function. As a criminal defence barrister, I visit one or more courts  most days and over the years have usually felt the privilege of working alongside great registrars and service managers – and have encountered such fine people throughout the country.

Custodians of the profession

Accordingly, before I teach junior lawyers about advocacy or legal strategy, I teach them something far simpler: how to treat the registry staff.

The way a lawyer speaks to a registrar tells me more about their professionalism than any brilliance in submissions they later make from the bar. Whenever I witness discourteous behaviour towards registry staff, I try to quietly address it with the offending party afterwards.

I believe our responsibility as lawyers extends beyond our own clients. We are custodians of our profession and that includes protecting the standards by which we conduct ourselves. If we remain silent when those standards slip, we should reflect on whether we are living up to our responsibilities as officers of the court.

We often speak about justice as though it belongs only to judges and lawyers. But justice has always been a collective endeavour. It depends upon good people quietly doing difficult work without expectation of applause or recognition.

Throughout my time in practice, I cannot recall a time when our office has reached out seeking genuine assistance and not been met with words like, “Let me see what I can do to help.” Those words reflect a culture of public service and collaboration that deserves far greater recognition than it often receives.

Some registrars have devoted 20 or 30 years of their lives to our courts. They have seen lawyers come and go and watched others take judicial office and retire from it, all while adapting to episode after episode of legislative reform. Their institutional knowledge has been earned through years of experience and our courts are stronger for it.

Absorbing the burden

Recent budgetary constraints within the Ministry of Justice made the commitment of registry staff even more apparent. Many courts suddenly found themselves with fewer staff while the work itself did not diminish.

We continue to speak about improving efficiency and delivering more timely justice, yet those aspirations cannot be achieved without the people who make the system work. Despite fewer resources and increasing pressure, registrars and service managers absorbed the additional burden with true professionalism and kept the wheels of justice turning.

Enduring patience, as is seen in the great majority of court staff, oils the everyday work environment, where emotions can run high, and consequences can be major. More often than not, registrars are trying to solve a reoccurring systemic problem for which they are being unfairly blamed.

Seamless and invisible

Conversely, when things go well, little commendation is given. Perhaps we have become so accustomed to the registry doing its job so smoothly that we rarely notice the thousands of occasions when everything goes right – because someone behind the scenes quietly ensured it did. Their greatest success is that maybe most people never notice it.

Indeed, while we acclaim erudite judges for their decisions and advocates for their courtroom skill, we rarely stop to recognise the administrators without whom none of those things could happen. Their work is so seamless that it is often invisible – and perhaps that is precisely why it is so easily taken for granted.

So, my plea is that the next time we walk into a courthouse, we greet registrars with kind enthusiasm, thank them generously when they help us, exercise deep patience when the list changes unexpectedly and remember that they are carrying responsibilities most of us never see.

Above all, remember they are people who chose public service and who know the importance of justice.

Thinking back to that registrar sitting quietly behind the desk while counsel furiously defaced her list, she reminds us that the true strength of our justice system is found not only in its judgments, but also in the character of the people who quietly keep it running every single day.

So, to all registry staff, thank you for your patience, your professionalism, your kindness and your commitment to a justice system that asks more of you than most people will ever know. You may rarely stand in the spotlight, but you stand at the very heart of our courts.

Samira Taghavi is vice president of The Law Association, convenor of its Public and Administrative Law Committee and the practice manager of ActiveLegal