A Clockwork Orange Clegg

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

Postcard from The Staterooms: Blue Nun edition

Dear Reader,

In the latest edition of Carter Ruck’s originally named Newsletter they refer to the fact on page 4 that they are acting for a number of lawyers who are on  the Solicitors From Hell website.  Private Eye, obligingly, informs us that Carter-Ruck are on the Solicitors From Hell website as “Premium Players’.

And so it came to pass after much measured judgment by the twitterati (and some outraged knee jerking) on the story that Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, was to be prosecuted for rape…  that he isn’t wanted for rape after all. Quelle surprise.

I may have mentioned it before – and I accept that my irritation with Toby Young is, probably, irrational, but I find him irritating in the extreme. He pops up all over the place, pulling various faces from smug to concerned to imperial, pronounces on a fair few matters he knows (or appears to know) little about and then manages to look even more smug.  It would not surprise me if he has mirrors in every room of his house.  I did, therefore, enjoy reading in Private Eye this afternoon…

THE HISTORY BOYS

TOBY YOUNG was in fine form as he launched into an attack on George Orwell’s essay The Lion and The Unicorn, a mere 69 years after it was first published, in 7 Augusts’ Spectator.

In the essay, written soon after The Battle of Britain, Orwell suggests that the incompetence of the British ruling class was hindering the war effort.  An affronted Young lays into Orwell, writing of the Battle of Britain: “The young men risking their lives to protect Orwell….were nearly all public schoolboys”. Later, he become overwhelmed with emotion: “It’s worth remembering that the few whom we owe so much to were all members of Britain’s ‘clapped out’ ruling class.”

Except, of course, they weren’t.  Some 70 per cent of them were state educated. Only about 200 of the 3000 pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain had been to a public school, and only 4.6 percent were educated at the top 13 public schools.  Even Churchill himself complained about the “almost entire failure of Eton, harrow and Winchester to contribute pilots”.  A fifth of the pilots were foreigners.

I don’t usually extract entire sections – and I do hope the Eye doesn’t mind on this occasion – but apart from it being an excellent piece – it does tend to confirm (for me, at least)  why I find Mr Young irritating. Blue Nun of us are infallible.  But at least we don’t appear on television at every opportunity to pontificate and, one assumes, get paid for doing so.  If Sky, Channel 5, Dave, QVC Channel want to contact me… I can knee jerk with the best of ’em… for a very large fee.  For the Beeb and C4… I’d even do my best to talk sense… for FREE.  Unfortunately, I am now a recluse and will only appear on national television if I am allowed to wear a burqa.

I am happy to draw my readers’ attention to a NEW book for lawyers: THE NAKED LAWYER. Truth can be stranger than fiction sometimes…and this is in the very finest traditions of legal marketing.  I am sure that Dr Strangelove of Muttley Dastardly LLP will be getting in touch. I have read the extract… I particularly liked the threat contained on page 2 of the extract…

Unauthorised duplication of this material in any form is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.  Violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

But… helpfully….. The Entrepreneurial Lawyer does cover herself – although, strangely, her pdf would not allow me to copy her words, so I used *GRAB* instead….

Anyway… if you are a lawyer who needs advice and are happy to subscribe to the full 12 volume set to get the revelation and wisdom  of The Naked Lawyer… then here is the link.

I am looking forward to the start of the new legal year, or at least, some vaguely sensible law to write about. Not a lot of law about.  There are, however, stories about crocodiles in the English Channel and  beaches being shut – only to find that the crocodile was a tree trunk.  Last year The Sun had Great White sharks off the coast of Cornwall with useful photographs of Great Whites in South Africa.  I am able to report, following revelations in The Sun this week that 2-3ft long  rats (with pics) are being found all over Britain (compounded by The Daily Mail which reckons there are 60 million of them),  that the news desk at The Sun is almost certainly now being manned by a seven foot long rat, wearing a homburg with a  *PRESS* card  stuck into the band,   having a larf.

On that note… do have a good weekend

Best, as always

Charon

Read Full Post »

Muttley Dastardly LLP seek only the brightest of the bright

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.

Read Full Post »