If you had to attend the High Court for a high profile case
a perfectly no… 24 Sep 20 14:00
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you know, the kind where the press show up to take pictures of the litigants going into court 

would you arrange to arrive in an MPV with blacked out windows, which would roll down and start blasting out “Lola’s Theme” at full bells, the doors slide out and you, any co-litigants and your entire legal team step out, dressed like the cast of Suits, and perform a slick, aggressive coordinated dance routine all the way down the pavement and up the court steps?

I have done this for the famous ITV Digital vs Football League trial.  The one that did for hammonds I think.

I was carrying a box.  

Word to the motherfooker.

The camera people kept running in front of us as we left and blocking the pavement and I was carrying about 8 lever arched files full of pleadings.

 

w**kers.

 

Amusingly the partner I worked for kept moving me so he could be in shot but you couldn't see him on the 6 o'clok news, but I was there proudly holding my box.

 

Probably my finest legal moment

Dude this was in trainee days and so post walkman and pre iphone.  I walked back carrying that cvnting box to the mothership playing "I left my wallet in el segundo" on the IJ

there’s virtually nothing there but an oil refinery 

it’s right at the end of the runways of LAX

because that’s where you’d out an oil refinery obv

I had a big case at the RCJ some years back where the FBU were intervenors.  There was a farily sizeable demo outside and a fire engine blaring our 'Ring of Fire'.  

I was involved in a case which went to the CofA and had to do a witness statement on something.  The issue arose at a first hearing I wasn't at, and neither counsel had taken a proper note of the specific ask. The Court didn't even have a proper record, just "tell us about this".

I'd joined the team about 2 months earlier and the issues in question related to a decision made about 10 years previously - as to why a policy said what it did.  There were no proper records of how the policy decision was made, just bits and bobs of stuff that I had to do my best with and none of the people involved were still around (most had even retired).

I had to listen to the judges absolutely slate my WS and cross my fingers that they didn't call me to explain myself, which thankfully they didn't.  

@ Wang 14:06

"I was carrying a box"

This reminds me, apropro of nothing, quite some years ago going to work one day wearing box-fresh new Loake shoes. Nice shoes but I made the error of not having worn them in, even down to the corner shops, after buying. A bit tight and by the afternoon I was looking forward to getting home and taking them off.

However, my supervising partner declared that afternoon we had an evening conference with counsel in chambers on an urgent matter. I was to carry the files in a case. Since I was working in Surrey, at the time, we got the train to Waterloo. Because by then it was rush hour and rush hour traffic, my supervisor decided that instead of getting a taxi we should walk the 'short' distance from Waterloo station to the chambers in Temple. Me with the effing case of papers and my flipping shoes. Just to compound matters, while I am about 6 feet, he was more like 6 foot three and quite athletic with it (I think he was into hill-walking and so on.) So he moved at a pace, I struggled to keep up with.

Of course, I was carrying the case. He carried an umbrella. 

By the end of the evening I was in agony. I think the blisters took about 10 days to completely heal. 

Just checking: 

1. Is that duller than my dull covid testing story?

2. Do you actually contribute anything to this board, or do you just post about how dull everyone else is? 

Gotta be more interesting than teding on about some corporate transaction one did doc-blozzing for, or a particularly complex contract one once drafted.  

"..and so they wanted best endeavours but I insisted on only reasonable endeavours in the 5th warranty subclause.  And I stopped them putting in boilerplate specifying use of the Gregorian rahter than Julian calendar!"

I have been involved in quite a few commercial litigation trials with significant press interest. The sad (from my perspective) truth is that the media could not care less about the lawyers in attendance unless those lawyers (a) dress like Harry Potter and/or (b) are attractive blonde Australians who are shagging Seamus Milne. 

That would change if you burst out dressed super sharp and threw massive coordinated dance shapes to loud music.

Incidentally the video for “Lola’s Theme” is the most aggressively early-noughties thing I can think of shy of a David O’Leary Leeds team sheer. The actual Lola appears in it - one of the DJs’ ex-wife - very MILFy

I got the obligatory pic of me in tabs going off to the Pret round the corner from the rolls building with the client to get a sandwich.

I am currently in training so that when the next pic is taken I look a lot better.