Lawyers ain’t what they used to be, says Geoffrey Bindman QC
Since I began my legal training in 1956, the demands of legal practice have changed and with them the character and culture of the solicitors’ branch.
My first job after qualifying was as assistant to a partner in a West End firm. It was a small firm by modern standards, with five partners. The senior partner, whom I never met (he was absent through illness for several months), had corporate clients based in the northern city where he had grown up.
The office was a handsome Victorian house on several floors. I was assigned a tiny former maid’s bedroom in the attic. My boss occupied a grand drawing room on the first floor where he sat behind a huge mahogany desk. This and other rooms were filled with dark antique furniture. Files, papers and law books covered every surface.
Every day, in his pin-striped suit, my boss walked bowler-hatted with carefully rolled umbrella to his Pall Mall club for lunch with his doubtless similarly attired chums. He lived in Kensington and
