Dame Anne Rafferty pays tribute on behalf of Kalisher to its former President Lord Judge
The profession has from time to time faced the loss of outstanding figures, lamented and missed. Never, in fifty years, have I known the profession go into deep mourning. When it heard that Igor (always thus known) had died, it was inconsolable. The Kalisher Trust knows the feeling. Igor was a trustee and then President of the Trust from 2015, and put heart soul intellect and experience into all he did for us.
He admired the shrewdness of Michael Kalisher QC and, naturally, the intellect and application. The original thesis for the trust was support for youngsters (he wouldn’t have had any truck with the modern disinclination to use that noun) who wanted a career at the criminal Bar but had neither means nor contacts. Nor finances. So far so good. What particularly delighted him was the requirement that the successful applicant for our help should also have something of Michael’s irreverence, wit, and sense of fun.
Igor began from principle and worked outwards into application. If a proposition were to land, it had to withstand scrutiny and preferably carry some nobility of purpose. That was particularly so if it were a material change, and most definitely so were the change liable to reduce or downgrade protection for the citizen. All this he achieved without raising the temperature of exchange or losing that serenity of delivery which marked him out. He was impossible to defeat in reliance on florid language. To dissuade him (possible, albeit rare – he was usually right, so why try?) one needed a well stocked arsenal of weapons grade arguments.
All these attributes shone brightly and steadily. They caught the ethos of Kalisher and every single youngster interested in the criminal Bar understood them instantly. So did the trustees, who soaked up his wisdom and many a time stood back and reconsidered. Never did he make any of us feel inadequate.
He was the kindest of men and the phrase “He wore his learning lightly” was coined for him. If one sought to paint the perfect elder statesman for the Kalisher trust, it could only have been Igor.
The artist would need a magic touch – putting enduring humanity onto the canvas is quite a task.