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It is always good to meet former barristers who also underwent with you the mediaeval torture known then as Bar Finals. I bumped into Richard Phelps last week in one of those modern clubs which has multiple outposts, where the decibel count resembles a cross between a colony of large migrating birds arriving for the summer and a pile-driver on a nearby road. This particular pleasure dome houses mostly 28 to 50 year-olds dressed in ‘smart casual’. My tie and detachable collar felt tight and constricting.
Recognising someone you haven’t met for decades is a strange feeling, combining joy and apprehension. The years roll away and instead of seeing an old, creased and sometimes ravaged face, you see – within the old face – the person as they were. Your mind does a bizarre transformation. He probably saw a younger person with a Jimmy Hendrix hairstyle, a naughty smile and slightly arched eyebrows (I made what was reported by the school magazine as a ‘very convincing’ Mr Sneer in Sheridan’s The Critic) while I saw a mass of black curls and the rather handsome face of a man who looked made for the films.
We walked over to each other through a rush-hour size crowd of younger achievers and decided to have two large ‘Between the Sheets’ which tasted about as awful as rum, cognac and triple sec would when unwisely mixed together. Our efforts to order two Dry Martinis had proved difficult. First, it wasn’t an option on the waiter’s iPad and, second, he kept saying, ‘So that’s just two glasses of vermouth, is it?’ When we tried to explain, he looked at us as though we had escaped from the British Museum.
Then followed the customary rambling about the past from which I will spare any person who ever discovers these diaries. I felt slightly embarrassed about my only ever having been a barrister and tried to stretch my outside interests a little more than they truly went. Richard explained that he had left the Bar after three years. He became a sort of private legal adviser to a well-known band, followed by a stint in what he called the Foreign Office but which I took to be some branch of the secret services, as he found it very difficult to particularise his work. Over the last ten years or so, he had taken on a quasi-legal role in what he called corporate branding.
The one stumbling block to our reminiscences was that the sets of chambers we talked about no longer had the same names. Gutteridge, yes. We have always been Gutteridge from as long as anyone can remember and nobody quite knows why. But, with most barristers we talked about, I simply couldn’t remember what their chambers were now called. ‘Wendy went to what I think is now called RiverBank Chambers, or is it Populus, no I think it’s Unity.’ Richard looked shocked. ‘What was Unity before?’ he asked. ‘No idea,’ I said, ‘unless it was…’ I then named an eminent set once located in the Temple bearing the address as its name. ‘And who is in the original place now?’ asked Richard. ‘No idea about that either,’ I said.
‘Oh dear, William! said Richard. ‘Look at this place we are in at the moment. Maybe not for us now, but it is superbly branded. Everyone knows its name. Re-naming yourself as a business is hugely important and it takes a long time for the new identity to have that instant recognition. Do barristers’ chambers get advice about this from industry experts?’ ‘What do you think?’ I replied, laughing.
‘It’s so dangerous,’ he said. ‘You can be casting away decades of recognition and goodwill. Barristers shouldn’t try to pretend they are business people. I mean, that’s why you lot all stayed at the Bar isn’t it? Because you aren’t.’ I asked him if his bit of the Foreign Office had ever tried to rebrand. ‘Good lord, no!’ he answered. He smiled broadly as he realised that I had worked it out. ‘Few can remember what the two letters and the number even mean. But they’re worth the world’s riches now. Watch your next feature film and you will see the famous film company followed by something like A BigFilmz Production in association with Fairytales Inc presents a Castaways film, but the only name that you will know is the good old film company title and logo you saw come up first and which you know as well as your own moniker. Never lose that!’
William Byfield is the pseudonym of a senior member of the Bar. Gutteridge Chambers, and the events that happen there, are entirely fictitious.
It is always good to meet former barristers who also underwent with you the mediaeval torture known then as Bar Finals. I bumped into Richard Phelps last week in one of those modern clubs which has multiple outposts, where the decibel count resembles a cross between a colony of large migrating birds arriving for the summer and a pile-driver on a nearby road. This particular pleasure dome houses mostly 28 to 50 year-olds dressed in ‘smart casual’. My tie and detachable collar felt tight and constricting.
Recognising someone you haven’t met for decades is a strange feeling, combining joy and apprehension. The years roll away and instead of seeing an old, creased and sometimes ravaged face, you see – within the old face – the person as they were. Your mind does a bizarre transformation. He probably saw a younger person with a Jimmy Hendrix hairstyle, a naughty smile and slightly arched eyebrows (I made what was reported by the school magazine as a ‘very convincing’ Mr Sneer in Sheridan’s The Critic) while I saw a mass of black curls and the rather handsome face of a man who looked made for the films.
We walked over to each other through a rush-hour size crowd of younger achievers and decided to have two large ‘Between the Sheets’ which tasted about as awful as rum, cognac and triple sec would when unwisely mixed together. Our efforts to order two Dry Martinis had proved difficult. First, it wasn’t an option on the waiter’s iPad and, second, he kept saying, ‘So that’s just two glasses of vermouth, is it?’ When we tried to explain, he looked at us as though we had escaped from the British Museum.
Then followed the customary rambling about the past from which I will spare any person who ever discovers these diaries. I felt slightly embarrassed about my only ever having been a barrister and tried to stretch my outside interests a little more than they truly went. Richard explained that he had left the Bar after three years. He became a sort of private legal adviser to a well-known band, followed by a stint in what he called the Foreign Office but which I took to be some branch of the secret services, as he found it very difficult to particularise his work. Over the last ten years or so, he had taken on a quasi-legal role in what he called corporate branding.
The one stumbling block to our reminiscences was that the sets of chambers we talked about no longer had the same names. Gutteridge, yes. We have always been Gutteridge from as long as anyone can remember and nobody quite knows why. But, with most barristers we talked about, I simply couldn’t remember what their chambers were now called. ‘Wendy went to what I think is now called RiverBank Chambers, or is it Populus, no I think it’s Unity.’ Richard looked shocked. ‘What was Unity before?’ he asked. ‘No idea,’ I said, ‘unless it was…’ I then named an eminent set once located in the Temple bearing the address as its name. ‘And who is in the original place now?’ asked Richard. ‘No idea about that either,’ I said.
‘Oh dear, William! said Richard. ‘Look at this place we are in at the moment. Maybe not for us now, but it is superbly branded. Everyone knows its name. Re-naming yourself as a business is hugely important and it takes a long time for the new identity to have that instant recognition. Do barristers’ chambers get advice about this from industry experts?’ ‘What do you think?’ I replied, laughing.
‘It’s so dangerous,’ he said. ‘You can be casting away decades of recognition and goodwill. Barristers shouldn’t try to pretend they are business people. I mean, that’s why you lot all stayed at the Bar isn’t it? Because you aren’t.’ I asked him if his bit of the Foreign Office had ever tried to rebrand. ‘Good lord, no!’ he answered. He smiled broadly as he realised that I had worked it out. ‘Few can remember what the two letters and the number even mean. But they’re worth the world’s riches now. Watch your next feature film and you will see the famous film company followed by something like A BigFilmz Production in association with Fairytales Inc presents a Castaways film, but the only name that you will know is the good old film company title and logo you saw come up first and which you know as well as your own moniker. Never lose that!’
Chair of the Bar sets out a busy calendar for the rest of the year
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Anon Academic explains why he’s leaving the world of English literature for the Bar – after all, the two are not as far apart as they may first seem...
Review by Stephen Cragg KC
