From The Desk of The Director of Education and Strategic Information
Dr E Strangelove LLB, BCL, MBA, Ph.D, Solicitor
21st August 2010
INFORMATION FOR PROSPECTIVE TRAINEES
We at Muttley Dastardly LLP appreciate that you come from a generation that has had everything served up to you on a plate by angst ridden middle-class parents who may well have sent you to ballet or music classes when you were a precious six year old. We know your parents pressure cooked you through your mollycoddled lives at prep and public schools – we do do Grammar (at a pinch) but not ‘State’ at Muttley Dastardly – and we are always amused at what you ‘say you did’ on your ‘Gap’ year. We are not employing your parents, so please warn your parents that if they try to ring up our HR department to ‘exert a bit of influence or pressure’ we shall take the call as ‘instructions’, charge them for listening and send them a bill. We will not, however, take a blind bit of notice, even if they start crying. We are not like a British university admissions department at Muttley Dastardly LLP.
We also accept that you probably think that our generation – The Baby Boomers – have trashed the place and left you with a mountain of debt to cope with for your entire working lives. You are right. We have. Live with it, as our American partners say. If you cut it at Muttley Dastardly LLP, you won’t ever have to worry about debt or, indeed, anything – ever again.
We are only interested in taking on the very best of the best. You will note that we only practise law in London and New York. We do this for a reason – there is just not enough money to interest us elsewhere. So you won’t be exiled to some godforsaken place, or worse, a forsaken place with a different god. You will be joining the finest law machine in the world, honed by self interest and ruthless billing targets to a point that our clients value that they can simply print our name on their prospectuses as legal advisers. We do, naturally, charge a licence fee for this
If you have had the misfortune to be poor, or attended a university other than Oxford, Cambridge, or London, please do not apply. Some of you may think…”Well, I went to Durham”. You can think that, by all means, but it won’t cut it with us. We don’t do *Second* here. If you think that you will get some kudos by saying you went to X or Y Law School to do your LPC – forget it. You won’t. We do not care which law school you went to to do your LPC. We admire their capacity for rapacity in terms of fees charged, but it really doesn’t matter to us where you went for the LPC. This allows us to say how *diverse aware* we are and say we take trainees from all walks of life. It is a PR lie, of course, but we have to show willing on the diversity issue before some interfering busybody at the Law Society or DEFRA writes to us taking up valuable billing time. Christ knows what DEFRA have to do with diversity apart from cloned animals… but that could be why, come to think of it.
There are many opportunities out there in the law. If you can’t join us, you could become an over worked family lawyer, a duty solicitor, or even work for local government or another law firm. The Police service will, I am sure, suit those of you who managed to get a Desmond. If you managed to astonish even the most PC lecturer at your university and got a Third then, armed with this certificate of incompetence, there will be difficulties ahead for you and we won’t even get the benefit of having you as a client in our new criminal fraud and money laundering unit – because you simply won’t be bright enough to commit the upscale frauds we are looking for at Muttley Dastardly LLP.
What will your life be like at Muttley Dastardly LLP?
It will be short if you aren’t any good. If you can bill when all about you have lost the will, you will progress through the ranks and, one day, become one us – we happy few, we band of Partners.
I look forward to meeting you at interview.
I won’t say good luck. Life is not a matter of luck – nor is getting into Muttley Dastardly LLP.
Dr E Strangelove
Strength & Profit
We will check Twitter and Facebook. Contrary to the attitude taken by other employers – we are looking for people who got pissed at university. We are looking for people who nicked police helmets, dressed up as pirates and behaved badly. We find that they tend to be more interesting, adventurous and have the irreverent and anti-establishment qualities needed to be a truly independent legal professional.
Damn. I was thinking of applying for a job with them.
Sorry John – You are far too kind a person for this! 🙂