King’s Counsel: Difference between revisions

Senior, brainy, court lawyers. The [[JC]] is lucky enough to know a few, largely because he shares with them a fondness for [[cricket]].

 

Queen’s Counsel are excellent men and women to a one, but they engage in a part of the legal process of which the [[JC]] is committed to steering as clear as he can: [[litigation]].  

There is also the small matter that, for a self-respecting contracts lawyer, even ''talking'' to a Queen’s Counsel — to ''any'' [[Litigation lawyer|litigator]], really — except one you are standing next to in the slips — ''is a confession of professional failure''. We commercial solicitors cannot notch our belt with conquests; there are no kill emblems pasted on our fuselage. We must take our pleasures another way. We play an [[Infinite game|infinite]], and not a [[finite game]].  

Everyone knows it is ''much'' more fun cross-examining [[Mrs. Pinterman]] about her [[Aleebee|alibi]], establishing a [[mens rea|''mens rea'']] and objecting to things. I mean ''security waterfalls''? COME ON. But, and for just that reason, {{isdama}}s, which we in-house [[legal eagle]]s find quotidian and workaday, court lawyers regard as exotic if distasteful butterflies — moths, really — to be pinned, labeled and enclosed in glass cages.

Now that being as it may, and however distasteful she may find it, every now and then a litigator walk into an {{isdama}} or two — like [[Clapham omnibus|Clapham omnibuses]], they tend to come along in clumps — should a thorny question arise, as to the metaphysical chassis or jurisprudential premise on which an {{isdama}}, or a {{gmsla}}, or a {{gmra}} is engineered. It doesn’t happen often but, when half a billion dollars is at stake, it is amazing how sharply the mind focuses on what might once have seemed a dusty academic conceptualisation. Philosophical questions like these — arcane, abstruse, recondite — are apt to perplex [[Magic circle law firm|magic circle]] [[partner]]s — whose predecessors, let it be said, ''wrote'' the damn things, back in the day — especially where they haven’t seen an actual ISDA cross the desk in fifteen years.  

So, if one wanted a sensible answer on just such a curly question, whom would a sensible person ask?

My friends, ''I'' would ask an expert. Someone who lives, breathes, and makes an honest livelihood out of manipulating these contracts. Who is daily engaged in the cut-and-thrust of disabusing the school leavers from Bucharest who are lined up against her, of the misconceptions in their [[playbook]]<nowiki/>s about the [[Delegation of depositary’s functions - AIFMD Provision|delegation]] arrangements in their [[Custody Arrangements and the Control Agreement - IM CSD Provision|custody form]]. ''Someone who has spent twenty years in the [[Documentation unit|doc unit]]''. 

To be sure, end-users are falling over themselves to rid themselves of these people and replace them with [[School-leaver in Bucharest|school-leavers in Bucharest]], but they are a tenacious bunch. Many are still around. If anyone will know how an ISDA is meant to work, these people will.  

Yet, by immovable convention it is ''not'' this cohort to whom [[magic circle law firm]]s turn in their moments of greatest need. Instead, they ask the one group in the world who charge ''more'' than they do, and who are ''less'' likely to have a practical clue what the right answer should be: ''Queen’s Counsel''.