Time for a new post since I have a new post.

In October I left the charming, old fashioned and cosy environs of the Royal Courts of Justice after just over a year working as Clerk to one of the Lords Justices to become a trainee legal adviser in one of London's less aesthetically pleasing Magistrates' Courts.

This has the benefit of offering me legal training which will at least enable me to become a solicitor, after two years, and in the meantime will provide me with Chambers friendly experience.

One of the first lessons I had to learn is to remain calm and impartial in court, particularly when witness to some frankly stunning displays of advocacy. If video cameras were permitted in the courtroom I could easily make a DVD for use as a teaching aid in BVC institutions entitled "How not to... make a bail application / argue abuse of process" etc.
I have two main observations on this, firstly, some poor sap is likely to be sent to jail by a bench who should (and could) have been asked to impose a community penalty. This is clearly A Bad Thing.
Secondly, a group of professional lawyers thought that advocates like this were good enough to be taken on... making it even more frustrating for those of us with demonstrably better advocacy skills who have yet to secure pupillage.

Anyone who has read a few of my posts will know that the Grauniad is not likely to be my newspaper of choice. However, my housemate is a writer and since all the luvvies advertise in the Grauniad on a Monday, she buys it.

With an interest in the law, it's difficult to ignore a front page like the one on this Monday's Grauniad. The headshots of 10 new High Court Judges were splashed up with the headline "First 10 high court judges under new diversity rules". Apart from the usual cavalier attitude to grammar, this is simply not true; these are some of the first judges to be appointed by the Judicial Appointments Commission, which, granted has diversity as one of its aims, recruits in more or less the same way as any employer - i.e. without regard to colour, creed, sex or sexual preferences. What the article sought to do was rubbish the new appointments system, claiming that it was no better than the oft-quoted "secret soundings".The main problem that the Grauniadista who wrote the piece has is that the judges are all white males, from mainly independent schools (or, horror of horrors, a Grammar School!). The reader has to persevere into the bottom of the third column to discover that in fact only 3 people from an "ethnic minority" applied. At no stage in the article are the full numbers of applicants given. By the Bar's historic nature, the majority of senior lawyers will be white males from public school and Oxbridge. The article does grudgingly allow the JAC to put its case which is quite sensibly:

"Improving diversity is a complex challenge, and can't be achieved
overnight"

Never mind the time required for the fresh crop of ethnically diverse and mixed sex barristers and solicitors to reach the top of their preofession, even when they get there it is a clear requirement that they be good enough. I couldn't care less if all the judges in the country were lesbians of Hong-Kong Chinese extraction if they were the best available candidates, but then the Grauniad has never been about true equality...

Hypocrisy is another of the newspaper's favourite hobbies. Witness at page 11 a surprisingly balanced and liberal piece about upholding the rule of law, praising Munby J for his comments about the Governments failures in the recent case of SK, the Zimbabwean illegal immigrant who should by rights be on the next plane to that unfortunate country. However, the Home Office have totally screwed up the case by failing to follow their own protocols. The piece ends with the sentence:

Mr Justice Munby has rendered a service by reminding the government - and us -
that our laws are for the benefit of all, not just for nice people.

However, if one turns a page and looks at the story on page 13, there is a slightly different emphasis. The article there concerns a family of 7 from Nigeria living in Plymouth, one of the children has sickle-cell anaemia and the mother cannot afford the medication, they fear persecution if they return home. My first problem with the way this is reported is that they are said to have been "threatened" with deportation. If they were born in the UK, it would be a threat (and one of unprecedented force) to deport them, however, they were considered at the time to be illegal immigrants. Therefore it cannot be a threat, but a duty for the authorities to repatriate them. Semantics aside, the story is that this family is loved by its adoptive community and the local students got together a campaign which has forced the hands of the powers-that-be and the case is being looked at once more. As yet there is no indication that there was anything wrong with the way the case was dealt with originally, so this represents a victory, albeit temporary and subject to change, for public opinion over the rules.I can only hope that the people of Plymouth and the readers of this newspaper will remember Marcel Berlins' words from page 11 if it turns out that the Nigerians should be sent home...