Josh Halliday

I heard it from The Guardian's Josh Halliday first. Josh is the Guardian's media and technology reporter and writes prolifically - as well as tweets constantly - on the subject.  Ironically I was working from home on a presentation designed to educate a group of lawyers about how people's changed (and changing) news consumption habits  are transforming the debate on the relative value of online versus hard copy press coverage, when I saw Josh's tweet: he was preparing to publish a Guardian article revealing the Financial Times' new "Digital First" Strategy.   

Where did you find this out? I asked him.  Are you at a press conference?  "No, I've got hold of a leaked email from editor Lionel Barber to all staff."  Bet the FT loved that.  "They are in the throes of a 25 net reduction in headcount, after hiring in 10 new journalists for digital roles.  The email explains this is "a big cultural shift" for the business daily.  The internal email sets out the paper's new position as "serving a digital platform first and a newspaper second."  According to Josh's full story posted later that day, one of the world's most iconic newspaper brands is "reshaping for the digital age". 

Particularly interesting in Josh's story were Barber's comments that his challenge is "to secure the FT's future in an increasingly competitive market, where old titles are being routinely disrupted by new entrants such as Google and LinkedIn and Twitter. The FT's brand of accurate, authoritative journalism can thrive, but only if it adapts to the demands of our readers in digital and in print, still a vital source of advertising revenues." 

Reading this put me in mind of The Lawyer magazine's announcement earlier this month (did you see the full page advert on the inside front page of the first print edition this year?) detailing how it is changing the way it calculates circulation figures, combining hard copy and online for the first time to put the focus rightfully on "people not platforms".  It is clear we can no longer justify the idea that online media is somehow a poor relation to its hard copy cousin. 

Before he joined the Guardian in 2010, Josh worked on a number of cutting edge / entrepreneurial projects, for example taking a role as Digital Media Assistant at Sunderland AFC (he studied Journalism at Sunderland University), founding Euro Collegejourn and also setting up the award-winning "hyperlocal" news site SR2 Blog.  This new year he was listed as one of the media industry's 30 To Watch, an annual spotlight on top up-and-coming media talent.  This man has a passion for the revolution in journalism, and a killer instinct for being first with a story.  So if you want to be ahead of the curve, make sure to follow his stories in the Guardian stories - and follow the man on Twitter.

For more information on how consumption of news via TV, Radio, Newspapers and Internet has changed, click here for a Click here for a detailed report by Ofcom.
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Loved Creative Cow's modernist rendition of Sheridan's 18th Century "masterpiece" The Rivals (think white crinolines and bloomers without the fabric to cover them, and wigs made from paper).  I caught up with the touring production at Windsor's Theatre Royal this week.  What a treat!

Reading up about Sheridan  after the performance, I was intrigued to learn of a stomach-churning alternative to court action for defamation claims, which was apparently quite the norm three centuries ago.  When Captain Thomas Mathews wrote a newspaper article defaming Sheridan's soon-to-be wife, the acclaimed playwrite famously challenged him to a bloody dual. A simple matter of honour apparently and quite the expected course of action in those days.  The first fight ended uneventfully enough, but a rematch resulted in some serious injuries on both sides and a lot of blood being lost.  We may complain of the ridiculous sums paid out in damages for defamation today, but this tale puts all that into perspective: when we compare with the common practice in Sheridan's day, we could have it a lot worse!
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Well done to our Sophie, for making the voluntary PR team for Dulwich Arts Festival this May.  Competition was fierce for the role as it is a big year for the Festival: its 20th anniversary celebration.  Sophie was keen to get involved and give something back to the community.  

I'll be making space in this blog for Sophie to detail what the Festival holds in store and how she's enjoying working with a rather different part of the broadsheet and broadcast media than she's used to - the arts and culture sections rather than the business and weekend money teams.  

We'll have to organise some Kysen outings to the Festival too.  Just to show our solidarity of course....

Nick Root

Taylor Root founder Nick Root has discovered that law firms have very different ideas about what marketing actually is, compared to their clients. Given law firms are marketing to these clients, surely this is a bit of a problem. So for example, clients will say that some of the most effective "marketing" their law firm does is the provision of secondees to their legal departments, also generosity with time and free advice on off-the-cuff small enquiries - as much as well-targeted, tailored and well-thought-through events or thought leadership. Yet firms put these activities in entirely different boxes just because some are done by the marketing team and others by partners and fee-earners; an arbitrary and inward-looking separation.

I spoke to Nick, still a partner at Taylor Root and now also at sister company Carter Murray, after reading his survey of client attitudes to law firm marketing: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (and The Beautiful), advertised in The Lawyer this week. I was keen to know more. "There's quite a gulf  between law firms and the people they are marketing to, most commonly in-house lawyers in big corporates, in terms of understanding what makes a positive impact, a meaningful connection and takes a lawyer-client relationship forward, and what is a complete waste of time - or worse, actually has a negative, distancing effect. Hence our title, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly...etc. It's an emotive subject too for busy Heads of Legal; I sent out about 300 personal emails to people I know well in senior in-house legal roles in big corporations and was staggered not only by the speed of response - a good number within just hours, some within seconds in fact - but the sheer numbers who took the time to answer. Even though we limited ourselves to two very targetted questions - what law firm marketing works for you, and what doesn't? -  we were surprised by a response rate of over 25%, a long way over the 5% we had been told to expect.  People clearly feel strongly about this issue. 

"What clients particularly dislike is generic, untailored, irrelevant content, whether lawyers not doing their homework in preparing for sales meetings, or blanket untargetted mailings, or updates that don't tell the client anything or are overly academic - or, as one General Counsel put it, "being inundated with reams and reams of irrelevant rubbish all the time."

Well, that's clear feedback!  This disconnect is unhelpful to say the least. And Nick believes there's one key change firms could make to bridge this gap.

"I've never really understood why firms are so reluctant to let their marketing people speak to clients. They always hold them at arm's length. So how on earth can they hope to get close enough to what clients want, to be able to advise their firms how to market to them! Partners are very nervous about "letting their marketeers loose" on clients, afraid of what they might say or the impression they might create. But surely the point is they should take care to hire people into these marketing roles that they rate enough to put in front of clients in the first place."

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (and The Beautiful) is a very smart piece of marketing in its own right: Carter Murray specialises in senior in-house legal marketing roles, and Taylor Root in the placement of senior in-house lawyers, (as well as private practice roles), ie the target of much of the legal profession's marketing budget, so the survey neatly demonstrates the consultancy's extensive network of contacts in both worlds, and a nuanced understanding of its own marketplace in all its subtleties. Talk about practising what you preach!

Nicely done, Nick.
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Some news this week left a very bad taste in the mouth. Yes, you've guessed: I'm referring to the story that horsemeat has been found in Tesco value burgers.  It was one of those stories that inspired some wonderful lampoonery and punnery.  Here are some choice cuts from Twitter (#horsemeat) and The Times' market report (thanks Gary Parkinson) describing how investors are "deserting Tesco at a canter for fear of consumer reaction":

“Reading the label on these Tesco burgers,” one broker says, “it turns out they’re fairly low in fat, but surprisingly high in Shergar.”  Another sometime wordsmith muses that “hamburgers” are an anagram of “Shergar bum”. A third, warming to the theme, suggested that in spite of the recent news, Tesco’s burger sales remain stable."

Best of all though, was The Times' cartoon (pictured above with kind permission of the wonderful and multi-award-winning cartoonist Peter Brookes).  Enjoy.
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An off-stage legal drama for Ex-New Order's Peter Hook has been influencing the musician's on-stage banter. At a gig this week at Camden's Koko (previously the Camden Palace for those of you old enough to remember) a Kysen director witnessed the legendary bassist introduce his rendition of one New Order classic with the words: "My barrister Mark told me to reclaim publicly what is rightfully mine".  He then dedicated the song to his  adviser. Anyone know who this lawyer is? Answers to the blog please!

Katy Dowell

Katy Dowell is "up for 2013 and raring to go." At least that's what she told me when I spoke to her just as her Top 20 Cases hit the streets in The Lawyer's first print edition of the year. I was keen to hear the story behind the story as it were: just how does The Lawyer go about compiling this seminal piece of reporting on the litigation market? Just how do they manage to find out so much information about cases coming up in the year ahead, whilst most other publications are content merely to review the year that's past? 

"We do see this as one of our signature features and so we're prepared to throw a lot of resource at it" she tells me. As her editor Cat Griffiths points out in her Leader this week, The Lawyer's Top 20 cases has become "the essential guide to the biggest and hairiest disputes in the English courts" and is unique in being "anticipatory rather than retrospective research". "We start work as far back as mid-November," Katy tells me, "contacting more than 100 of our best contacts amongst the top clerks, all the major sets and top litigators in the big-hitting firms, asking them what they have on their books for the coming year. Selecting which cases to highlight was particularly difficult this year as there was so much to choose from - much more than last year. As I said in the feature, this is the year when credit crunch litigation is really starting to break through and that will bring with it problems for the banks". Almost half her Top 20 involve suits involving banks or financial institutions. "At the start of the credit crunch, in 2008/9, people were scared to sue the banks because they relied on them for financing. Also it was less clear at that time exactly where claims might lie. As time has moved on the true picture is starting to emerge and people are more adamant about bringing banks and financial institutions to account where they see a case to answer." 

In terms of other trends, Katy points out two: "the continuing rise of CFAs is interesting - the multi-million pound suit against Britain's richest man, steel tycoon Lakshimi Mittal, is being funded by a CFA. Also the continuing rise of the litigation boutiques - firms like Stewarts Law, Peters & Peters, Kingsley Napley and Enyo Law. In the days of the corporate boom" (remember those?) "litigators were the poor relations. But in these straitened times, this is now their moment: litigators have everything to play for and they don't want to be hamstrung by the sensitivities of their corporate colleagues and blocked from acting on the best of the cases in the market because of client conflicts. These boutiques have stepped into this space, particularly setting out their stall as being brepared to take on the banks. When you compare Stewarts' PEP of £926,000 with Clifford Chance's £933,000 it's clear they are on to something. 

"Of course for some, the thrill is still about being part of a cross-disciplinary, cross-jurisdictional team advising the top global corporates and the world's leading financial institutions. But for others the freedom to specialise in litigation and not worry about conflicts has more appeal (excuse the pun)."

Top 20 cases is one of the most well-read of The Lawyer's features in the year. This is not only the result of all the hard work from November by Katy and the team (Joanne Harris and Sam Chadderton provided additional reporting) but also the time and energy she invests in building relationships with the Bar throughout the year - her contacts book in this part of the legal world is second to none. Moreover she is clearly in her element and has emerged energised and excited from the task - presumably licking her lips at the thought of all those juicy litigation stories she'll be writing as the year progresses.

Well, we love reading your feature Katy – and look forward to your lively write-ups as each of your Top 20 opens in court. 

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Good news for sex and age equality in the Oscar nominations list, out this week. Do we see signs that attitudes to older women are changing? (A subject very close to my heart!)

The Times' arts correspondent Jack Malvern reminded me of the story how Meryl Streep once famously illustrated the problem of institutional sexism and ageism in the film industry depriving fine actresses of good parts by telling how as soon as she turned 40 she was offered no less than three roles as a witch! But this year, two actresses spaced apart more than 70 years have both been nominated for Oscars: 9 year old Quvenzhane Wallis for her role in Beasts of the Southern Wild and 85 year old Emmanuelle Riva for Amour, respectively the youngest and oldest person ever to appear on the Best Actress shortlist. Are the times a changing? Now that would be a good start to the New Year.   

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It looks an exciting year ahead in the arts world generally. Sumptuous reading this January as the papers set out the treats ahead over the next 12 months. I'm particularly excited about the Lichtenstein exhibition opening at the Tate Modern this February. Bound to be a busy exhibit though, as its comic book quirkiness has mass appeal across the generations. 

Click here for details of the exhibition.

2012 Review

What a year it's been!  Looking back at my 2012 blog posts, it's hard to believe so much has happened to a profession not really known - let's face it - for its revolutionary spirit.  Maybe all that's changing...

The year began auspiciously with Jomati Consulting's report After The Golden Age: The New Legal Era.  Tony Williams told the Conversation in January how the changes we were witnessing in the business of law firms were fundamental and permanent - and how only fools consoled themselves with the notion that normal service would resume once the economy returned.  And legal news stories breaking over the ensuing months only served to underline his point as the first licences for Alternative Business Structures (ABSs) were granted and firms made their market moves.


During the course of the year I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to talk one-to-one with the people behind some of the most interesting stories: Neil Kinsella on RJW's merger with Australian law firm giant (and world's first listed law firm) Slater & Gordon; Jeremy Hopkins on the irrepressible rise of Riverview Law; Tim Oliver on Parabis's long awaited grant of its ABS licence - nervous regulatory  authorities taking an entire eight months to get their heads around an application for a structure designed to enable private equity investment; and solicitors regulation poacher-turned-gamekeeper Andrew Hopper QC, who was quite vocal throughout the year on what he called "the essential disconnect" between the bright strategic thinking at the top of the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the pettifoggers charged with administrating the new system on the ground.  O dear.  There have been some unhappy moments this year as a result of this disjointed thinking.  But Tim insisted he was confident the SRA has come to realise it needs to recruit some different thinking into this arm of its organisation and skill up - and he believes that although it was painful for Parabis being in the vanguard, the firm has at least paved the way for others following behind to have a smoother ride.

In the midst of all this market drama, a smile was raised by brand valuation consultancy Intangible Business.  Co-founder Thayne Forbes reminded us that in this Brave New World of legal services, particularly with new types of investor stepping in to the business of law, firms need to understand their "brand value" as never before.  We loved their Law Firm Chocolate Bar Challenge. 

And would you believe it, this chocolate-themed blog post was by far and away my most popular of the entire year.  Without a doubt.  See, I always told you lawyers are fun to work with!


We also enjoyed getting closer to some of 

the "esteemed mavericks" in the legal blogosphere.  The Conversation featured Mike Semple-Piggott talking about his famous Charon QC blog and being the most dangerous man in legal education; Professor John Flood on his Random Academic Thoughts blog and blowing students' minds; Alex Aldridge's Legal Cheek and how the increasing influence of the leading bloggers brings with it a new accountability - even for these men on the fringes of polite legal society. 

What interesting times we live in.

Merry Christmas everyone!  

If you haven't had a chance to view our wonderful video Christmas card, 

take a last look here before you break for the holidays.  

See you in the new Year!

The Conversation returns on 13 January 2013

Buddy the Elf

Buddy the Elf says the Brave New World of Christmas Services has changed beyond recognition. Ever since Earthly Rewards Management Consultants got involved in the business of the North Pole, change seems to be the only thing that's constant. 

"I was nervous at first, not knowing how my world - my comfortable little life I'd been living for the past 200 years - would change", he tells me over a cup of hot cocoa in Covent Garden. "The first revolution was the outsourcing of our gift wrapping department to India. That was a shock. Colleagues and friends I'd known for a couple of centuries just suddenly weren't along the corridor from me any more and I had to adapt the way I did my own job to liaise with a completely new team of colleagues in a totally different location - who I would never get to meet face to face. The next shock was the outsourcing of the Naughty and Nice lists to a Managed Services Provider in Ireland. We all anticipated disaster. But I have to say that apart from one or two small glitches in the very earliest days, the transition has actually gone very well. And it's certainly lowered the level of stress we used to see around here. O my word! I remember that moment every year when Twinkle would be found in a heap of jangled nerves on the floor of the processing room, entangled in a never-ending ribbon of paper, her face the colour of her scarlet waistcoat. Thank goodness those days are over. 

We all worried that the Spirit of Christmas would be lost in this new efficiency drive, that quality would be compromised and the heart would go out of the business. But if anything, I think life has improved. At the North Pole, with all the non-core activity happening elsewhere, we can now focus on what we do best - and what I love doing best - hand-crafting toys for the children. Everything here is now focussed on that element and making sure we all do it to the very best of our ability.

And with our new "Elf Engagement Programme" giving us golden opportunities to talk to The Big Man about our daily lives and work, how things could be made more efficient, and at the same time how our working lives could be made more fun - we have developed a new company mantra: "Work to Live". I even have more free time now to keep in touch with my family and friends - including my old chums from the gift-wrapping department, now working for Amazon in the next town." 

So life is quite merry for our Buddy. And may your Christmas be too!

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Here's a heart-warming seasonal story I stumbled across on Twitter -  a Christmas tree, a lawyer with an axe and an early present for some special needs children.  Chris Sutton is a paralegal in Mundays' Family team. He attended a Surrey business networking event last Friday where guests were invited to chop down  Christmas Trees on Barrossa Common. (Chris: "Don’t you wish all networking events were this fun?") Later, he was invited to take a tree back to the office, but as Mundays already has a beautifully decorated tree in its reception, he thought a more deserving home would be Portesbery Special Needs School in Camberley. 

This picture shows the tree in situ, now wonderfully decorated by some of the Portesbery children who are  severely autistic or have similar learning difficulties.

So lawyers have hearts? Most definitely. This is the proof.
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I asked for a little help from my (twitter) friends, in making last minute suggestions for  books to buy the lawyer in your life this Christmas.  With only seven shopping days left til Christmas (yikes!), we thought you'll probably be grateful for any Amazon-enabled solutions.  
Here are some of the suggestions:

Always a fan of tales about innovation and revolution, @LegalTwo recommended Charles Arthur's Digital Wars, which recounts the story of the battle between Apple, Google and Microsoft and is interesting for anyone interested in seismic market change.  As @LegalTwo puts it, it's a story of "how lazy incumbents get found out by people who truly understand the customer experience."

@LBCWiseCounsel has a new book out this year that any forward-thinking lawyer will love: The Tale of the Old Badger, the Young Fox and the Wise Owl discusses the general topic of adapting to change and how to skill up to grab the new opportunities emerging.

Lastly, a reminder of two books out this Winter from Kogan Page that have featured in this blog before: David Tovey's Principled Selling - How to Win More Business Without Selling your Soul; and Jo Larbie and Heather Townsend's How To Make Partner And Still Have A Life.

Merry Christmas!

Milan Dalal

Milan Dalal thinks professional advisors could gain a lot from listening to clients more. I know Milan as Director of Brook Intelligence Centre, but prior to this he had senior business development and comms roles at Grant Thornton and Olswang. I caught up with him shortly after his company had launched a new service via the Legal Week website. Legal Week Reports offers profiles of the world's top companies, in 10 key sectors, "to help law firms gain a better grasp of the businesses of clients and potential clients".

Over coffee our conversation turned to his thoughts on a recent report on "Effective Client-Advisor Relationships" produced by the FT in conjunction with Meridian West and the Managing Partners Forum. "The continual feedback from the in-house lawyer community is that clients want their lawyers to understand the commercial context they're operating in, so how the advice they give plays out for the client in real life. For the client, legal issues are not theoretical. They are very real. But so often their legal advisors seem disengaged from this fact. 

"You see this at its most acute in pitches for new business. The best way for lawyers to win new business is to show that the legal team actually takes an interest in the client's business. It sounds so basic, but you'd be amazed how often lawyers will forget to do this. In a pitch situation particularly, their first instinct is to talk about themselves- their credentials, their expertise, maybe their knowledge of the target client's sector, with a little bit about the client's business tacked on at the end. In-house lawyers will always say that lawyers pitching to them should spend less time talking about themselves. The conversation should be flipped: far less "we are this, that and the other..." and far more "we've noticed this about you, we wondered if this or that may be an issue for your business". Lawyers can still pack in a lot of information about their strengths this way - in terms of knowing the law, understanding the sector and the business context. Instead of just talking about how they don't only give legal advice, they also help clients meet their commercial objectives, they are actively demonstrating it. 

"Professional advisors often don't get that clients will assume an awful lot about levels of expertise and legal skill. Lawyers wouldn't have made it on to the pitch list without these "hygiene" factors being taken for granted. So none of this needs to be covered in a pitch. Clients do buy business relationships though, so what matters to them is whether they can engage with the people in front of them. They'll be thinking about whether they could work with the legal team presenting". 

According to the Report, clients want a more strategic, commercial dialogue with their advisors, "particularly in a more complex, uncertain and global business environment". 

A big challenge. But at least the profession has Milan to help it rise to the occasion. 

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What's the price of bad publicity? Apparently about £20m over two years. Neatly put - by barrister, media pundit and blogger Rupert Myers. 

It seems the only reason Starbucks has agreed "voluntarily" to pay more tax than legally required is because its UK customers expressed such outrage and anger at the company's position and threatened to boycott the coffee shop altogether. The story does sum up the point very neatly indeed. In the words of Starbucks UK Managing Director Kris Engskov speaking to Sky's Jeff Randall: "we have reacted to our customers... we have seen that doing business responsibly is good for the bottom line and this is a good example of that". Well, quite. 

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Fun was certainly had at Kysen's "Magic of Christmas" party this week, as the team decamped to a vault room in the basement of Tuttons Bar on Covent Garden piazza. Honey and I managed to keep secret our surprise guest until the night: magician Stephen Barry, who amused and bemused us in equal measure with his mind-reading and sleight-of-hand magic tricks. His website (take a look- he does a lot of celeb events so you'll see some fun pics of an astonished Ant and Dec, a surprised Angela Griffin and a puzzled Harry Hill) claims that he can "make the impossible possible, close up and right in front of your eyes". And that's exactly what he did on the night. Definitely a fresh twist on the genre. For example, he got us reading his mind, guessing correctly which cards he was holding! 

Favourite moment of the night? A completely unintended one: Stephen, having wowed us into the palm of his hand, seeing Mariana's amazed gasp when he used her full name ("how did he know my name?")- before he pointed out he was only reading her table place name. We won't let you forget that one in a hurry, Mariana! 

Jo Larbie

If you want to make partner and still have a life, Jo Larbie can tell you how. Jo is a talent management and professional development specialist who's worked with a variety of professional services firms over the last 15 years or so, such as Bircham Dyson Bell, DLA Piper, Stoy Hayward, Eversheds. I caught up with her just before the launch of her book, How to Make Partner and Still Have A Life - co-written with Heather Townsend and published by Kogan Page this week. It's a distillation of her knowledge and wisdom garnered over the years, condensed into something very practical, that readers can use as a guide for effecting change in their lives. 

"The phrase "Partner Material" is bandied about in professional firms to separate those associates who are from those that aren't" she tells me. "But no-one really knows what this means. This is a problem for firms, as well as those aspiring to partnership - not to mention those already in a partner role! And of course, today the partnership itself is changing - it's no longer the only career destination for top talent in professional firms. 

"From the individual's point of view, the key is to decide objectively if partnership is for them, and if it is, what they need to do to make that happen. My book is aimed at helping people unpick what "Partner Material" is, helping them decide whether it's a role they want, assist in the job of skilling them up for the task if they do want it, and also guide them through the conversations they need to have with managers and peers to make it clear to everyone that that's what they are aiming for and to seek their help and advice along the way. The days are gone when you could make partner by working very hard and someone just noticing you. Today you need to have an astute understanding of the targets the business is working to - ie what matters to senior management - and then make sure you are excelling at those things. And never confuse input with output!"

Jo says that talented people are often shy about broaching the subject of their ambitions with their bosses. "But it's all about how you present the issue. A good idea at appraisals is to say something like: "If I want to be a partner, what do I need to do? Can you tell me about your experience? How did it change for you? What should I think about doing differently?"

Some senior partners mistakenly think the different attitude of Generations X and Y is about a lack of commitment compared to their day. This is not true. Trainees and associates today just have different expectations of work and life. In particular, their time scale is different: they don't believe in deferred gratification. They don't want to be shut in a room and fed work, for some later prize. They want it all now - interesting and challenging work and time to enjoy a meaningful life outside of work! And considering that most young lawyers today come out of law school with a £30-50K debt, who can blame them!  My book attempts to shed some light and help spawn a generation of professionals who can enjoy both their work and their lives!"

I've ordered copies of How To Make Partner And Still Have A Life for several friends already. In my book, talent coach Jo Larbie is a very talented lady herself! You can buy it from Amazon here.
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A good night was had by all at the London Solicitors Litigation Association's Annual Dinner this week.  The great and the good of the London litigation scene (Litigaterati? Maybe not) were there in force, treated to sumptuous food  in the Law Society's beautiful Common Room and a speech by Lord Falconer: wonderful tales of his role as Blair's first Justice Minister and the "fun" he had taking ministerial responsibility for the poisoned chalice of the Millennium Dome.  

But it was LSLA President Francesca Kaye that gave us the most food for thought.  In recapping on where we are with the Civil Justice Reforms, she raised a very interesting question: the current fashion for Oligarchs to stage their legal battles in London's is generating huge amounts of money (and therefore taxes) for the country, but why is this not being used to reinvest in the whole civil justice system and its infrastructure, such as IT, to ensure we can continue to provide the level of service that big litigation requires at the same time as benefitting everyone else in the system? When you think of all the cuts and the different imaginative and multifarious ways that Legal Aid is being withdrawn, "Why" indeed.
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Stocking fillers for the lawyer in your life #2  Only 22 shopping days left till Christmas (yikes!) so we thought you might appreciate a couple more gift ideas for the lawyer in your life who has everything. New at the book store is of course Jo's and Heather's book on How To Make Partner and Still Have A Life, but for an old favourite you can't do much better than Gary Slapper's Weird Cases and More Weird Cases - comic and bizarre cases from courtrooms around the world. Here's a flavour:

"Courts have seen judges do things like try to turn off a musical tie playing "We wish you a merry Christmas" while sentencing a defendant to prison, fall asleep in the middle of trials, flip a coin to decide a case, demand a foot massage from a clerk, and get sentenced for judicial racketeering. Courts have listened to the defences like that of a bogus dentist caught using DIY tools on his patients and a man who based his defence on being as hapless as Homer Simpson...The cases featured in Weird Cases are those that truly stand out as odd, even among all the unusual dramas that challenge the courts. The chapters are: Compensation and Punishment, Love and Sex, Food, Drink and Drugs, Judges, Death and Violence, Pets and Animals, On the Road, Lawyers, and Jurors, Friends, and Neighbours."

Enjoy!