trial and error

I was only in a childish way connected to the established order;
I was terrified of oysters and glanced distrustfully at guardsmen;
And not a grain of my soul owes anything to that world of power,
However much I was tortured trying to be someone else.
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam

[An over-dramatic lead-in if ever there was one.]

My first ever trial this week, Monday to today. By my I of course mean a trial to which I've contributed my unparalleled p/copying know-how, a few evenings and half a weekend, and next to no cerebral input. By first I mean the first that actually ran its course; the one before, which had tied me to the p/copier for even longer, settled the day before it was scheduled to start.

Educational value: ++++

• watching two Senior Counsel (the anti-Monarchists' substitute term for Queen's/King's Counsel), Boss D, and another senior practitioner (with a menacing British accent) go head to head


• finally getting the big picture of what the bloody case is about: it's amazing how much work can be done (and billed for) without any grasp of the central issues

Physical rating: +++++

• pushing a jam-packed three-tier trolley up and down the Terrace: equality between the sexes has gone too far when the male (solidly built) instructing solicitor feels un-obliged to offer his muscles and allows the female AC (however strong and progressively minded) to get a wicked upper body workout 4 times a day for 4 days


• brisk (make that frantic) walking between the courthouse and the office to fetch things forgotten or newly arisen, in a suit (thank fudge it's spring), in a sustained state of panic about leaving something behind: it didn't feel lawyerly, it felt like a nightmare that was about to repeat itself ad infinitum

Culture shock: +++

• one instructing solicitor was dozing off by the morning of day 2, right there behind counsel and in the judge's direct line of sight: sure, probably exhausted from the late nights, but c'mon


• another (female, middle-aged, sloppily dressed (yes, even by my standards) ... - ladies what do we gotta get some self-respect around here?!) was doodling / playing with her mobile phone


• aforementioned unhelpful male instructing solicitor and I were only slightly disgraceful – we kept a list of Boss D's colourful expressions (for which he is known and feared): "fairly floss in the wind", "a drowning man holding on to a corpse", "a three-level building with no foundation", "a quagmire", "the worst penalty [interest clause] in living memory", ... (all of which, for the avoidance of doubt, were used to describe opposing counsel's arguments)