In the 1960s young solicitors who wanted to do a bit of advocacy were thrown in at the deep end. You learned on your feet and hoped not to make too many mistakes, like asking Flying Squad detectives questions such as: ‘My client is a man of good character?’. The answer could well be ‘No, sir. He mixes with thieves and prostitutes’.
The correct phrasing was: ‘He has no convictions?’. And, when examining an officer’s notebook: ‘When did you make this up?’. Much safer to say ‘When did you compile this?’. And in the days when some spoke in rhyming slang, if a client said something you didn’t understand, ask him to explain. ‘I was on the river’ did not mean sculling but ‘I was drunk’. ‘River Ouse’ = ‘booze’.
In the 1980s, when I had learned where not to put my feet, I was asked by the Legal Action Group to help organise courses designed to teach prospects to do likewise. We devised a set of puzzles to be studied and then enacted. One was the necessity of showing inconvenience to other road users in a prosecution for ‘without consideration’.
I don’t think participants ever looked at them in advance. I remember once asking them to think of mitigation for Lady Macbeth: misplaced ambition; devotion to husband; penitence. It all ended with a mock trial.
We used to try to get them on their feet saying ‘My name is John Smith and I appear to prosecute. Ms Jones appears for the defendant’. In turn, Ms Jones would say the same and so on. Then one day we met a stumbling block. One woman point blank refused to say ‘I appear to prosecute’. She was never going to and that was that. We tried to explain that this was just an exercise and, anyway, if you didn’t know how to prosecute you could never defend properly, but she was adamant. She left at lunchtime.
Some weeks later I received a letter of thanks. It was from one of the shyest on the course, a middle-aged man who could barely open his mouth. He had, he wrote, never had such a good time since he qualified. He was a chartered accountant.
James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor
No comments yet