The Keane Scholarship - The Hon Patrick Keane AC

This biography has been prepared by Ms Anna Kretowicz, one of his Honour’s last associates prior to his retirement as a Justice of the High Court of Australia.

I could begin this article by listing the numerous accolades and professional achievements of the Honourable Justice Patrick Keane AC but, not only would that take up most of this page, this would not do justice (pun not intended) to his Honour’s contribution to the law, and on a more personal note, to the beginning of my own legal career.

His Honour’s accolades are well: he was a Scholar; he has been appointed to the ranks of Queen’s Counsel; he has served as Solicitor-General for Queensland, as well as a Judge of the Queensland Court of Appeal, Chief Justice of the Federal Court, and as a Justice of the High Court of Australia. But for all of his Honour’s intellect and encyclopaedic knowledge of the law, nothing strikes me more about Justice Keane than his Honour’s kindness, endless patience, warmth and good humour.

The first thing that people in legal circles say to me when it comes up that I work for his Honour as his Associate is something along the lines of, “Oh, how brilliant it must be to work for Pat.” That remark is accompanied by a smile that reaches the eyes and fond memories of when they worked with him as his junior or briefed him when his Honour was Solicitor-General. I can’t help but agree, and I feel both so very lucky and unlucky that working for Justice Keane was my first “real” job after graduating from law school; there is no better person to have learned from in the formative years of my career, but there is also, I fear, no one who will ever be a better person to work for and with.

I have certainly learned a great deal about the law and legal practice, about what judges might be getting at when they ask counsel questions, and more importantly, what judges do and don’t want when they ask those questions. And perhaps it will only make me more nervous standing behind the Bar table having learned so much about what happens behind the Bench.

While it is no doubt valuable what his Honour has taught me in respect of how to think like a lawyer, what I have learned from his Honour about how to behave like a lawyer is invaluable. And in this regard, it speaks volumes that there is no person that I have come across that doesn’t fondly refer to him as “Pat”. With a brain like his Honour’s, the times that his Honour has missed something, misunderstood or is mistaken are few and far between. And perhaps I am biased, but I know that something good is in store when his Honour breaks his silence in sittings to ask a (sometimes devastatingly sharp) question of counsel.

But there has not been a single moment that I have felt as if his Honour is not, at the very least, willing to listen to what I or any other person may have to say on some matter. His Honour affords the same respect and kindness to his overly eager 25-year old Associate (who only learned what a Notice of Contention was upon seeing one for the first time at the High Court) as he does to another Justice of the Court. His Honour would regularly say, “After you”, to me getting in and out of the lifts at Court during sittings or running up and down escalators at the airport. His Honour also seemed to be greatly concerned that, upon realising that he had left his briefcase (full of all the things he needed to work on) at the Court when we arrived at the airport in Canberra after a long week of sittings, the real inconvenience would be to me when I offered to go back to the Court and retrieve it.

One would think that, with such an encyclopaedic knowledge of the law, there would be little room for much else in his Honour’s brain. But how wrong that assumption would be. On many an occasion I have found myself standing opposite his Honour as he has quoted passages of Ulysses to me, enlightened me as to the historical origins of why Friday the 13th is an unlucky day, and recalled cricket scores and statistics from some time long before I was born.

One of staff at the High Court said to me, remarking on his Honour’s impending retirement, that, “They just don’t make them like him anymore.” True it may be that we are now reaching a generational shift in the legal profession and the increasing diversity at the Bar and the Bench is undoubtedly a change for the better, I think it is equally true to say that there is something special about Justice Keane. I should really be able to put it into words, that being what I fuss over every day as a lawyer, but I am not sure that I can. It has been unforgettable working for Justice Keane, and I am glad that his legacy can be carried on with this scholarship.