Of Nose-Enders

Having escaped from court for today I returned to chambers, which are not a cross between a sixth-form common room and some old boys' club in London, with the ties, and the whiskey, and the rustling of copies of The Times whenever anyone enters the room.

They are however somewhere where we feel we can talk freely, bitch about opponents, judges or our lives in general. There is a lot of laughter too, even if the comedy comes from the darker end of the scale, and is closer to Psychoville/The League of Gentlemen than awful-and-not-a-lot-funny Not Going Out with Lee Mack.

Very little of the time is spent blowing your own trumpet or how you reduced an opponent or witness to tears, or your latest triumph, but about the mistakes we have made because in general they are much, much funnier. And no-one likes a show-off. Plus as a Judge once said to me, mistakes are only mistakes if you don't learn from them. Then they become experience.

I seem to have gained plenty of experience over the years, but I have yet to top the following nose-ender (a question which produces a devastating and unforeseen answer). This was also an example of asking just one question too many: Little Johnny had told the court his uncle had abused him whilst he was watching TV in his uncle's room. Defending Uncle, the exchange with my colleague went as follows:

Counsel: Were there any other TV's in the house?

Johnny: Yes, downstairs in the front living room.

Drawing a line here would have been prudent: The simple point to make to the jury in closing was that Johnny could have watched TV elsewhere, so why go to Uncle's room. He persisted however:

Counsel (triumphantly): Aha, so you could have watched TV elsewhere then?

Johnny: No because I've got MS and I'm not allowed to go down the stairs on my own.

Counsel: Ah

LSC: A joke that would be hilarious, if it wasn't so serious

About 75% of my time is taken up by either doing VAT returns, tax returns, or correcting the view held by the general public that we are all fat-cat lawyers (something which especially the print media and wider media in general seem to persist in believing too).

Frankly I'd have been better off going in for the whole corporate gig, if the experience of my friends with 9-5 office jobs, company Audi A6's and a pension is anything to go by.

Fees for criminal defence barristers are now paid directly by the Legal Services Commission. In anticipation of the change they closed many of the regional offices and opened one central office in London. With 4 members of staff.

Undeterred, they gamely batted away complaints of payments taking over a year with their spokesperson claiming that 95% of claims were paid within the target time of 3 months.

As your man on the ground I can confirm that this is complete and utter bilge.

The terms of credit for most businesses are 28 days. One might have thought that the government would be keen to assist what are essentially 8500 small businesses by trying to adhere to that timescale, but as I'm currently owed about £20000 in fees, many of which date back to last year, we can safely assume that this is not a priority.

Pulling out my handy yardstick, my fees clerk was on the phone to the LSC the other day chasing another late payment (I should say at this stage that criminal cases are divided into 3 thirds, and you are paid according to when the case is finalised). It seems there was a dispute about which "third" my case fell into. The exchange went something along these lines:

Clerk: But this is a final third case.

LSC: What's a third?

Initial Thoughts

Recently I met up with a very dear friend D whilst on my travels on Circuit. In the shadow of Clifford's Tower, D and I were passing the time in the newly-reduced robing room that had recently suffered the installation of a video-link booth to keep said court centre just about in the 19th century.

I say suffered for two reasons. Firstly considering all the rest of the unused space in the building (including the High Sheriff's Dining Room, current usage: 1 day per year) it was felt that the booths would do just fine upstairs, and to heck with the bespoke furniture and cramped surroundings; And secondly, due to the Grade 1 listed status of the building, the installation was a little, perhaps, limited. That is to say the booth could not touch the walls as a permanent structure, and the powers that be could not remove an ornate and ancient oak bookcase from the wall. So they simply put the free-standing booth in front of the bookcase, leaving the books on it. Ve-ry sensible.

But I digress. D was happy to share a tale of when he was being lead by a former luminary of circuit and the profession as a whole, WS QC. D and his leader were engaged in the defence of one of a team of pimps, who had allegedly been sexually and physically abusing the girls that they ran. One such allegation against D's client was that such abuse had taken place in a car next to a churchyard one evening.

Putting his case as silkily as possible, WS closed his cross-examination in the following way: "There is no issue that intercourse took place in the car that night, Miss X, but there was no unpleasantness, was there?"

To which the response came: "What are you talking about!? He knocked my front teeth out and then s****** me until I bled!"

Nodding knowingly to himself as he sat down, WS remarked, "I thought not."