Lawyers hijack election
06 August 2010
With Masterchef 2010 now safely over, it seems that lawyers have switched their attention to another favoured pastime. Politics. 

According to a report  on the forthcoming federal election by Lawyers Weekly, out of the total 849 candidates contesting the 150 seats on offer in the House of Representatives, 55 (or 6.5%) are lawyers or paralegals.

And of these almost half - 26 in total - are leftward leaning, following our lawyerly PM's lead and running for the Labor party. This is almost double the number running for the Libs (14). Six lawyers are running for the Greens whilst nine are running as independents or for smaller parties.

A lawyer running for office yesterday

Wentworth in Sydney's east is busier than Banco on admissions day, which comes as no surprise. Three out of the seven candidates are legal professionals. Four if you include the incumbent and former leader of the opposition Malcolm Turnbull who studied law at Sydney Uni. And although it's a Liberal stronghold, Malcolm might just be a little bit nervous about the upcoming poll. He'll be up against a class act in Steven Lewis, who heads up Slater & Gordon's commercial dispute resolution practice. Slater & Gordon is of course Julia Gillard's old haunt.

While it's touch and go in the polls at the moment for both parties - assuming no last minute breaking scandals - one thing's for certain, our next PM is bound to be a lawyer. Before starting his career as a journo and undertaking that stint in a seminary, Opposition Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott studied law at Sydney University.