RollOnFriday's definition of a star lawyer is quite different from most, but it's the correct one, and there were plenty that deserved the label in 2018.
An early example of individual achievement came courtesy of a US attorney, who was compared to Indiana Jones after surviving a booby-trapped house.
In April a Skadden lawyer won the dubious distinction of becoming the first person to be jailed as a result of Robert Mueller's probe. In related clown news, a solicitor quit law to become one.
In June a naughty solicitor who ripped off a sex dungeon master was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. A barrister was sentenced to mockery on social media after claiming that white people should be able to identify as black. He was trying to thread the needle of self-identification, a culture war minefield whose danger was exemplified by a transgender lawyer who called the cops on a transexual solicitor, then did the same to Father Ted writer Graham Linehan, then was revealed to have once been convicted of threatening a man with a golf club.
Meanwhile, in Japan, a lawyer promoted a facial exercise device which resembled a propeller glued to a ball gag.
Two stand-out lawyers made a nuisance of themselves on public transport this year. First, an interesting lady ranted that she was "a fucking international lawyer” as she demanded wine on a flight. A few notches down, a partner disturbed fellow passengers by picking his nose on a train. And his ear.
Swearing was the glue that bound together a few other of the year's most impressive legal practitioners. A barrister got a bit touchy with a junior, then boasted that he "buttfucked another chambers dry" (he wouldn't tell RollOnFriday which one, or how). A Wildean solicitor told the SRA they were "fucking bent c**ts", and even copied them in to outrageous emails he sent other lawyers to, he said before he was struck off, shortcut the inevitable reports of his conduct.
Sterling commercial awareness was demonstrated by a Pemberton Greenish manager who called a person a "c**t" in the pub. She was blissfully unaware that they were a major client of the firm, and lost her job. A lack of spatial awareness was in evidence at Hogan Lovells, where a partner was filmed by an Irwin Mitchell lawyer from across the street as he browsed smut with his back to the window. The story received the most hits of the year. You should be ashamed.
