Sticks and stones may break lawyers’ bones, but names
will never hurt them, says the Insider
It is a truth that, if not universally acknowledged, jolly well should be, that lawyers in general, and lawyers who write for publication in particular, need to be thick-skinned. It is well known that eavesdroppers seldom hear well of themselves, but as any lawyer will tell you, when your clients are paying for your time at an hourly rate that would make any honest prostitute blush, they won’t hold back from telling you what’s on their minds.
Generally speaking, clients’ comments refer to the case itself and hence can be finessed by reference to finer legal points that they, as laymen, cannot possibly understand. True, this is harder if (say) the learned judge has just referred to you as a lying jackass in front of the client, but here again legal jargon comes to the rescue as few learned judges would ever say it so bluntly, or at least not until after lunch.
Of more concern are clients who refer to your personal appearance. Luckily I have not come across too much of this myself, but I remember working with one female who had long fingernails, like the talons of some mythical beast. These were adorned with airbrushed scenes appropriate to the season and gold charms pierced through at least one of them. It was fascinating to watch her opening a coke can (with a Biro) but excruciating to be sat with her in a meeting where a client suddenly piped up:
“I say! When you use the bathroom, do those things ever go through the paper?”
Of course, this can go both ways. On another occasion, an acquaintance was shadowing the senior partner, who was interviewing a client about his proposed personal injury action against someone who (he claimed) had used the power of voodoo upon him. He was something of an oddball and had, I am told, the most insane hair, sort of piled up all on one side of his head like topiary, actually giving him a slight list to starboard, but too tatty to be deliberate.
Part of the way through taking his statement, the senior partner passed my chum a note. Expecting some important instruction—look this up in Kemp & Kemp: Personal Injury Law, Practice and Procedure; is emotional distress due to the evil eye; this case will put the system on trial—she was somewhat taken aback to read:
“Do you think I should get my hair cut like that?”
Only a diplomatic request to be excused for a lavatory break prevented her from guffawing in the poor man’s face.
This same acquaintance recently received her first ever poison-pen letter, or rather e-mail. It came from an individual whom I shall call H (not the one out of Steps). I had better not give you his surname or you might be tempted to look him up on MySpace and e-mail his friends; there are only two of them, Tom and Just William.
H is my chum’s former neighbour who has been in her flat many times as a guest; as such he might seem an unlikely candidate for an outpouring of invective. However, his first allegiance is to her recently ex-lodger who has been moved on to make room for a much loved fiancé. H and the lodger used to spend many a Saturday trolling around crystal shops and Lidl, seeking spiritual enlightenment and cheap canned food, and why ever not? I am a big fan of their German chocolate, especially at Christmas time.
Thus I can understand H’s compulsion to do something, although in his shoes I’d have picked up my car keys, fetched all her kit, and moved her into my place, but that’s just me. H chose to go straight for the keyboard instead.
I wish I could repeat his e-mail here as it is amusing but as it is libellous I can not. Try to imagine Nikki Grahame from last year’s Big Brother, dressed up as a bloke, having a hissy fit—for those of you who don’t follow Big Brother substitute any ineffectual skinny bloke, well of course I can’t name names, and the effect is strikingly similar.
Thick-skinned or not, I would be marginally disturbed by the thought of my mate meeting H on some dark night were it not for the fact that he weighs about six stone wet through. Also he has fire walled any response she has tried to send, changed his mobile number and does not wish to be acknowledged if they meet on the street.
I can sympathise with this; I have found that it is difficult to carry on a sensible conversation with someone who is trying to climb inside a wheelie bin and shouting:
“Get away from me, scary woman!”
Happens to me all the time.
Speaking of cowardly writing, this accusation was levelled at the Insider some months ago with reference to an article about the Shilpa Shetty/Big Brother débâcle (see NLJ, 2 February 2007, p 182), and in particular to a disparaging remark about Jade Goody—I think I referred to her as plug ugly. An NLJ reader from somewhere in the Channel Islands took exception to this and wrote in castigating me for my lily-livered literature. Given that it was a personal remark, I can sort of see where he was coming from.
However, anyone reading the entire article should have known without my telling them, that the ugliness referred to was as much in Goody’s actions as in her physiognomy. A lady of quality is seldom seen at her best advantage when telling another lady to return to her country of origin by the swiftest means possible, particularly if said message be condensed into two words, the second of which is “off”.
By the same criterion, Danielle Lloyd, formerly judged the most beauteous in the land, would on her Big Brother showing resemble something that had crawled from under a rock. I hope we are clear on this.
Jennifer James is the Insider
