Law and Peace (41 page)

‘Oh, BabyB. I got into all sorts of trouble. You see I met up with the solicitor I mentioned and she pretty quickly worked out that I was neither a judge nor a barrister. But she also decided that it would be quite fun to continue the blag for a little longer and so gave me some papers on what she said was “a very simple personal injury case”. But what she didn't warn me about was your friend BusyBody. Scared the living daylights out of me, I can tell you. Thankfully she made an offer my solicitor friend said was at least “half-decent”. For my part I'd have tried to persuade the client to settle even if she'd only offered five pence. It's certainly put me off doing any more legal impersonating.'

 

 

Friday 12 September 2008

Year 2 (week 50): Buskered

 

Overheard TheBusker telling HeadClerk this morning about a parking fine he'd been given.

‘Yes, I was parked about an inch over the edge of the parking bay and only because the first car had already encroached into my own.'

‘So what did you do?' asked HeadClerk.

‘Just not worth the time even considering an appeal so I sent off the money with a little note saying that I was not going to dispute the fine. Then I added that the traffic department had seven days to come to my house and clean off the glue that the ticket had left on my windscreen or else I would not only report them for criminal damage but I would also be issuing civil proceedings for trespass to property as well as hiring a very expensive contract cleaner to do the job.'

‘And how did they react?'

‘They'd obviously never had anyone raise this before and within two days of my letter being sent I not only had the traffic warden himself, but also his boss, knocking at my door at 8 a.m. with a bucket of hot water and a cloth.'

HeadClerk smiled and TheBusker, who now had the attention of the rest of the clerks room, warmed to his theme. ‘I know we can't all choose what we do for a living but there's no need for anyone to be a jobsworth. I mean, who'd choose to be a traffic warden, anyway?'

‘Reminds me of that Harry Enfield sketch,' said HeadClerk, ‘where a child was taking his belongings out of a doll's house and then looked up at his parents and said, “When I grow up I want to be a bailiff.”'

‘Well, given how ruthlessly efficient they all are, I can't say I was surprised to hear it was a Westminster traffic warden who discovered the car bomb outside that London night club,' continued TheBusker. ‘Maybe that's the solution to the war on terror? Just fill the security services with armies of commission-based traffic wardens.'

 

 

Monday 15 September 2008

Year 2 (week 51): Tomorrow never comes

 

I went to a ‘Sub-Prime' party with Claire on Saturday night where the dress code was ‘bring the best of your worst or the worst of your best', which basically meant it was full of shiny tracksuits and very tattered old dinner jackets.

‘So what do all the papers mean when they keep describing things as sub-prime anyway?' asked Claire.

‘No idea,' I answered drunkenly.

‘Sub-prime shops, sub-prime clothes, even sub-prime people. It's just another way for the condescending, snotty-nosed media to call people chavs.'

I'm sure she's right but in the meantime we were all following the instructions on the ‘Sub-Prime' invite which was to ‘live like there's no tomorrow'.

Which means that like all good sub-prime schemes I am now suffering an almighty hangover, since despite the promises, tomorrow really did come and I still have one or two pretty enormous problems to sort out.

 

 

Tuesday 16 September 2008

Year 2 (week 51): Vultures

 

With the collapse of Lehman brothers yesterday it was no surprise to find that an emergency chambers meeting had been called this evening at very short notice. The topic was one that is probably being discussed in boardrooms up and down the country. Pretty standard you might think. Except for the fact that in
our
boardroom, the single agenda item was listed rather tactlessly as ‘How can chambers benefit from the present banking crisis?'

This didn't stop at least half of chambers from attending and HeadClerk kicked off with, ‘With all this talk of recession, what we must not forget is that wherever there is hardship there is opportunity, specifically in the areas of insolvency, property, employment and divorce.'

‘Do you mean bankrupting, repossessing, sacking and er, sacking?' said TheVamp.

‘Well, that's another way of putting it, I suppose,' he said.

‘Or vultures, might be another way,' said BusyBody.

‘Do you think we're some kind of free-living hippy, justice-for-all, do-gooding girls brigade?' said OldSmoothie angrily.

He had been offensive on so many levels that for once BusyBody was actually silent for a moment as her mind clocked all of the different insults he had thrown. Fortunately UpTights stepped in. ‘Maybe not. But a bit of self respect and decorum when the rest of the world is suffering wouldn't go amiss.'

‘That's a little ironic coming from you, don't you think?' OldSmoothie replied.

HeadClerk ignored them all and concluded without any hint of irony, ‘So I want everyone to get out there and talk to the media about how terrible this whole recession is and how the only people who are going to benefit are the lawyers.'

Welcome to the age of prosperity (for lawyers, at least).

 

 

Wednesday 17 September 2008

Year 2 (week 51): Twits

 

With tenancy decisions for FraGiles, Sharon and their fellow pupils approaching, it all brings back terrible memories of last year and my initial fights with TopFirst. Although I've been more than a little pre-occupied with my own problems in the last few months, I have noticed one pupil in particular who is starting to make her mark. Mind you, when I say ‘make her mark', this is not necessarily a positive thing. It seems that she has got herself on to Facebook and Twitter and has been evangelising around chambers about how this is the new way to bring in work, and that if you're not plugged in, as it were, then you're doomed. This has inspired a worrying number of the senior members of chambers to sign themselves up to various social networking sites. Or rather, taking OldRuin's lead when he started using email a little while back, it's inspired them to get their secretaries to sign up on their behalf.

What this has meant is that this pupil now has about half of chambers avidly following her status updates to see how on earth they should go about doing it themselves. The result is that Twitter (the only name that fits when you hear her haughty tones) has gone into update overdrive. So much so that not only do we (for I have of course also signed up) hear about pretty much every detail of her life from what she has for breakfast to the times she passes wind, but she has also started speaking in real life in the form of a series of staccato status updates. Even BusyBody, who pretty much does this kind of communication naturally, has spotted it after she appeared against her in court and realised that Twitter was addressing the judge in exactly the same way.

I mentioned this to Claire over a beer last night and questioned half-seriously whether this was the future of our cherished language.

‘You joke, BabyB, but I have to admit that on the very odd occasion when anything interesting actually happens to me, the first thing I think of is how it will sound on my Facebook update to my friends.'

Maybe we're all doomed.

 

 

Thursday 18 September 2008

Year 2 (week 51): Bingo!

 

Finally, I got a call from Ginny today telling me that she's achieved success with the expert witness I've had her stalking. She managed to get him on to boasting about his ‘extra' sources of income and the Moldy cases came up as an example. Sure enough, I was right. TopFirst and one of the in-house lawyers at the telecom company quite specifically paid him off – not to be completely biased their way, of course (that would have been too obvious), but instead to do the more subtle job of not performing terribly well in the witness box. So, whenever he started to go off-message, TopFirst would give him the sign and he'd fake the need to relieve himself, leave the courtroom and then start receiving instructions from TopFirst by text.

Ginny had done a sterling job, particularly because it seems she taped the whole conversation. But she held back the best news until last: her absolute
pièce de résistance
. Having borrowed his phone to pretend to make a call, she then ‘accidentally' dropped it and told him she had lost it in the crush of the bar they were in. Whereas in fact she had hidden the phone, which she duly handed to me along with a DVD of her video recording. She said with some excitement, ‘I nailed it, BabyB. Every single text that that little weasel TopFirst sent is on here.'

From her tone it sounded as though this job were no longer just business but rather something more personal. When I suggested this she replied, ‘It's rare that any of my jobs ever get to me but there was just something about TopFirst that really got under my skin. Not just his smug arrogance and conceited ways, something deeper and more hateful. Something that I guess, if truth be told, slightly scared me.'

‘Tell me about it,' I answered, as I pocketed the evidence and handed over the fee she had earned ten times over.

 

 

Friday 19 September 2008

Year 2 (week 51): Nuclear option

 

‘So what do you want, you snivelling little creep?' asked TopFirst, with his usual charm. It was 8 a.m. and we were meeting in a café on Fleet Street after I'd phoned to tell him that he might find it in his interests to be there.

‘Well, I wanted to thank you for dropping us both in it with the Bar Standards Board.'

‘I don't think so, my friend,' he said sarcastically. ‘This time you are well and truly going down. Should be only a few more days now before the case finishes and the Board sets in motion your final downfall.'

‘That would be funny, if it weren't for the fact that I happen to know a certain Mr TopFirst sold short on the telecom company at exactly the time you have alleged that I was doing so.'

He looked confused.

‘Strange that,' I said. ‘Maybe you're trying to take the heat off yourself. Is that it?'

Now he was looking a little concerned. ‘You're bluffing. You couldn't . . . you wouldn't . . .'

Slowly it started to dawn on him that it might indeed have been possible for someone to contrive to make it look like he had taken a bet on the same shares himself. He just couldn't work out how.

‘. . . it's not possible . . .' he continued.

Well, I'm certainly not going to be the one who tells him that I have his bank account details courtesy of his desire to get into
Who's Who
, nor how easy it was to call in the favour with my friend Blagger and to get him to sell short on the telecom company in TopFirst's name.

So that's the first part of the story and I thought I'd let him stew on it for a little while. Although I admit I hadn't anticipated that TopFirst would immediately retort by telling me where I could stick my little set-ups and double bluffs. However, this wasn't all I had up my sleeve, and whilst I knew this, he didn't. So I let him rant on a little longer before interrupting his flow. ‘All of which, TopFirst, would be serious enough. But just consider the double whammy of being caught out in not only insider dealing but also expert-tampering.'

This really stoked the fire and he leapt to his feet and started striding around the café, shouting obscenities and pointing at me, before sitting back down, taking a deep breath and saying, ‘I don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about, BabyB, and even if I did, you wouldn't be able to even begin to prove such a baseless and scurrilous allegation.'

‘Now that's just where you're wrong.'

He sat up straight as I produced a mini-DVD player and started to play the expert's little love-nest confession. TopFirst's first reaction was to say, ‘What's Ginny doing there? You . . .'

But he couldn't find the words and I said, ‘I think you'd better listen to the whole thing, TopFirst. Might make you reconsider your strategy for all sorts of things.'

He did so in silence and this silence continued even after the video had finished. Then he glared at me sullenly. ‘So what do you want?'

‘Your hide, truth be told.'

‘Yeah, right. That's why you're showing this to me.'

‘Ooh, very clever, TopFirst. My, we are growing up into a smarty-pants little lawyer, aren't we?' I answered.

I then went on to explain to him in roundabout terms that all TheMoldies who had registered claims with us would settle for an apology, five thousand pounds each and no costs for either side, and that in the light of the scandalous evidence I'd just showed him, he might just want to consider it. Oh, and they could also take down the mobile mast that TheMoldies had been complaining about. What's more, he might find that it's in both our interests to withdraw the complaint he'd made against me to the Bar Standards Board. And finally, any offer should be made direct to TheMoldies themselves at the door of court, thereby sidelining Slippery and OldSmoothie and without any reference to me whatsoever.