For a judge who left a law firm or a corporation, institution or organisation, what fact starts the period set by the provision?
General information · Not legal advice
Material to check
For this exercise we read the papers showing the firm's role in the case, such as the appointment of counsel naming the legal firm, the firm's register entry, and the record fixing the date the judge left it, together with the corporate register and employment record where the accused is a corporation, agency or organisation.
These are types of material to look for, not evidence already verified by PRO SE.
Where readings differ
One reading takes the trigger as the leaving itself: where the judge retired from a legal firm, limited liability legal firm, legal partnership, legal office or a joint legal firm under the Foreign Legal Consultant Act that had been defence counsel for the accused or agent for the accused or the victim in the case, the judge is disqualified until the period the provision sets since that date has run, and the same applies to one who left an officer or employee post at the corporation, agency or organisation that is the accused.
Another reading stresses the limits: the firm's role suffices, because the provision turns on the firm having acted as defence counsel or agent in the case rather than on this judge having handled the matter personally, and the second item reaches only a corporate, agency or organisation accused, so a natural-person defendant is not covered by it; the provision does not say when the date of leaving falls if the firm wound up rather than the judge withdrawing.
Your judgment
If the law firm was dissolved rather than the judge leaving it, how could the file establish the date from which the period set by the provision runs?
PRO SE does not make this decision or keep a case record on this public site.When to reconsider
We look at this again if the period the provision sets is amended, or if a court decision decides when the date of leaving is treated as occurring for a partner whose practice wound up.