Ooh, you are lawful

Every aspect of popular culture is very keen to tell us how interesting and exciting the legal profession is. The books and films of John Grisham and others and endless TV series – like Elvira’s favourite “The Good Wife” – all paint a picture of lawyers as Ubermenschen.

They’re cleverer than you and me, they’re richer than you and me, they’re harder-working than you or me, and they’re either more ethical than you or me or more ruthless than you or me. Sometimes both. 

Because sometimes, doing the right thing demands a lack of ruth.

Ordinary people (like you or me) are mere cattle to these soaring beings. Only they can protect us, save us or vindicate us, poor victims that we are – only they can enter the Holy of Holies and look The Law straight in the eye.

Which is why every encounter I have ever had with the legal profession has been such a crushing disappointment.

When I did jury service last year, the barristers were very well spoken but they were utterly pedestrian in questioning witnesses and presenting their cases. It was extremely unsexy.

Nevertheless, some of my fellow jurors were not disabused of their preconceptions of these titans walking among us. To them, the sheer impressiveness of these bewigged posh boys was utterly convincing, notwithstanding what they actually said. They were thrown into confusion by the fact that one said one thing, while the other contradicted it. Fortunately, there was a nice, posh, old man in an even bigger wig who told us what to do.

But at least that bore some resemblance in outward form to the mental picture of the legal profession we have all built up.

I await eagerly John Grisham’s upcoming “The Conveyancer”.

As previously mentioned, the Sicilies are moving house. After Stamp Duty, legal fees make up the second largest expense of the average house-mover.

Has anyone ever met a conveyancing solicitor? I haven’t. In all of my house moves, I have never once seen face-to-face the person who I paid to do this work.  

And what does this work consist of? Sending me letters asking me to get things for them, waiting a few days, and then passing those things on to another solicitor, who will write a letter to the other party (after a few days), as far as I can tell. Being a conveyancer must be much like being a personal trainer, insofar as it involves getting paid to make the person paying you work.

On one occasion, this involved Elvira and I driving from Woking to Oxford on a weekend to put some paperwork through the letterbox of a locked and closed solicitor's office - just to make sure they had it on Monday morning. 

If you pop down to WH Smith, you can pick up a DIY Last Will and Testament kit for a few quid. Go back 20 years or so and if you wanted a will, you had to get a lawyer to do it for you – no doubt at the cost of several hundred pounds.

Today, most conveyancing seems to get done in glorified call centres by unqualified or semi-qualified legal executives, overseen – on paper at least – by an actual solicitor.

And it can, because much like making a will, conveyancing appears to be a semi-skilled bit of administrative work which has been mystified by the self-interest of the legal caste into yet another tax on getting anything done.  Godspeed the day when you can print a DIY conveyancing kit off the internet and this professional closed shop is broken up.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s really just like it is on TV. But somehow, I doubt it.

I know that my own line of work is little better than the fleas that plague the vultures feeding on the rotting carcass of late capitalism, but if a tree fell on the whole legal profession and no one was there to see it, would anyone care?