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[[File:Jolly contrarian.png|450px|thumb|center|A Queen’s Counsel — {{jerrold}}, to be precise — yesterday.]] | [[File:Jolly contrarian.png|450px|thumb|center|A Queen’s Counsel — {{jerrold}}, to be precise — yesterday.]] | ||
}}Senior, brainy, court lawyers. The [[JC]] is lucky enough to know a few, largely because he shares with them a fondness for [[cricket]]. They are excellent men and women, to a one, but they engage in a part of the legal process | }}Senior, brainy, court lawyers. The [[JC]] is lucky enough to know a few, largely because he shares with them a fondness for [[cricket]]. They are excellent men and women, to a one, but they engage in a part of the legal process that the [[JC]] is committed to steering as clear of as he can: [[litigation]]. | ||
Not just because suing and being sued is hard, gives you a tension headache and is beset with fiddly, procedural bear traps, but because the road is strewn with absurd conventions, unarticulated rules of etiquette and unspoken ways of behaving that you have to get ''[[Substance and form|formally]]''; right, hang whether you were right [[Substance and form|in ''substance'']]. That’s not just how the [[JC]] rolls. | |||
===Litigators are from Mars, commercial lawyers from Venus=== | |||
In legal practice, court lawyering is ''golf'' you see, and the [[JC]] is a ''cricket'' kind of fellow, not just in pastime, but by disposition. Litigation is combative: it has ''etiquette'' to mask a fundamental ugliness. Commerce is co-operative. “Being a good sport” is a point of [[substance]] and not [[form]]. | In legal practice, court lawyering is ''golf'' you see, and the [[JC]] is a ''cricket'' kind of fellow, not just in pastime, but by disposition. Litigation is combative: it has ''etiquette'' to mask a fundamental ugliness. Commerce is co-operative. “Being a good sport” is a point of [[substance]] and not [[form]]. | ||
There is also the small matter that, for any proud contracts lawyer, even ''talking'' to a Queen’s Counsel — to ''any'' litigator, really — except one you are standing next to in the slips — ''is a confession of professional failure''. We commercial contracts folk cannot notch our belt with conquests; there are no kill emblems pasted on our fuselage. We must take our pleasures another way. We do this by our ''lack''of rancour; we know we have done it when we see our clients going peaceably about their business, promending down the high street in their finery, waving cheerily at us from the wheel of the fancy motorcar our careful stewardship has enabled them to | There is also the small matter that, for any proud contracts lawyer, even ''talking'' to a Queen’s Counsel — to ''any'' litigator, really — except one you are standing next to in the slips — ''is a confession of professional failure''. We commercial contracts folk cannot notch our belt with conquests; there are no kill emblems pasted on our fuselage. We must take our pleasures another way. We do this by our ''lack'' of rancour; we know we have done it when we see our clients going peaceably about their business, promending down the high street in their finery, waving cheerily at us from the wheel of the fancy motorcar our careful stewardship of their affairs has enabled them to acquire. | ||
We are like dogs in the nighttime: you know us because we do ''not'' bark. We mark our performance by the ''lack'' of cuts, scrapes, bruises and abrasions on our pretty faces. Our measure of success is contracts ''so clear'' that no one would ''dream'' of arguing. | We are like dogs in the nighttime: you know us because we do ''not'' bark. We mark our performance by the ''lack'' of cuts, scrapes, bruises and abrasions on our pretty faces. Our measure of success is contracts ''so clear'' that no one would ''dream'' of arguing. | ||