64 legal eagles admitted to the bar

By JULIA DAIA BORE
SIXTY-four new lawyers were officially admitted into the legal profession last Friday at the University of Papua New Guinea, bringing this year’s total number of PNG’s legally registered practising lawyers to 1,014.
Chief Justice Sir Salamo Injia said last Friday’s admission added another 64 to the existing 950 registered lawyers this year.
He said this year’s intake was the third largest number of lawyers admitted so far. 
The biggest number of admittance was last year when 100 lawyers were admitted into the bar and the second largest was 76 in 1974, a year prior to PNG gaining independence.
Sir Salamo also described the continuous increases of lawyers into the profession as a sign of this country’s maturity and stability of the legal professional base from its humble beginnings of having only four practising foreign lawyers in 1946, after World War II, to where it is now.
He said that of the newly sworn-in lawyers 22 were women.
Sir Salamo also said that to date, a total of 1,300 lawyers have passed through the country’s Waigani-based Legal Training Institute.
He added that the increasing number of females being admitted as lawyers since PNG’s independence was also a fair and healthy sign of gender equality within the legal profession.
“Of the 1,014 registered practising lawyers in PNG this year, 262 are women, meaning 262 are women and 752 are men,” he said.
Sir Salamo, whose own son, Terry Injia, was one of the newly-fledged lawyers admitted last Friday, told the young legal-eagles: “This now adds to a sizable number from the Legal Training Institute’s graduating school of laws which show that the profession is showing all signs of stability and maturity in this country.”
The chief justice also encouraged the lawyers to honour the profession, as best as
they could.
Meanwhile, Legal Training Institute director Pauline Mogish, while announcing the admissions of the 64 lawyers, told those gathered in the packed courtroom one that those included in the batch were six “second-generation” lawyers whose parents are themselves  practising lawyers.
The six were Terry Injia, Sabin Svana Maeko Dusava, Azaria Gabara, Thomas Michael More Ilaisa and Emmanuel Rere.
Mogish also announced to the bench of 14 judges witnessing the occasion,  that Rere also  won the dux award.
Due to the large number of admissions, the group had to be divided into two courtrooms, admitting 32 admissions each.
The main courtroom one had 14 judges headed by Sir Salamo to witness the admission, while in another courtroom  five other judges led by the Deputy Chief Justice Gibbs Salika witnessed the admittance of the other group of new lawyers.