A great blog I've started reading: Baby Barista

http://timesonline.typepad.com/baby_barista/

A fictional account of a junior barrister at the English Bar, this blog combines unrelenting meanness with, more than abundant, wit and style. As someone who has no interest in becoming a lawyers, I found this blog absolutely fascinating, not to mention amusing. I got to learn a bit about the peculiar workings of the law, and hear about the scheming and rivalrly among lawyers. With one reviewer commenting: "His blog is very clever and witty but I can’t take such unremitting meanness, it’s like swallowing sulphur or eating vindaloo curry everyday", what's there not to like of this blog (in small doses)?


Here's an excerpt from the blog:

Year 2, week 19: hook, line and sinker

the insurers had ridiculously dug their heels in for no apparent reason. Well, no reason which they gave anyway. All in, it was a rear end shunt worth £1,500 where the insurers had suggested that my client had contrived the accident but unfortunately for them without a shred of evidence. Almost in a sulk at their lack of success they refused to give any instructions to settle and instead insisted on their barrister cross-examining my client at ridiculous length as to his finances and his general situation in life.

By the end of the first day the judge was getting ever so slightly irritated by the droning on of my poor opponent and eventually brought the evidence to a close. Come submissions, he only asked to hear from my opponent before giving the briefest of judgments in my favour.

All in all, I must have been on my feet about ten minutes for which I earned a total of £6,000 after the uplift was taken into account. With the smell of money still fresh from the case I rang my solicitor only to be told,
“Well done BabyB. Nice little earner for all of us. It’s getting easier by the day to make insurers think even the most honest of cases is dodgy.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Oh come on. Surely you know the routine by now?”
I didn’t.
“It’s so easy BabyB. You just throw out a teeny weeny inconsistency early on and they fall for it every time. First they start alleging fraud and then go on to make it into some huge and most importantly expensive trial only to be confronted by a nice upstanding member of the community when they get to court. Hook, line and sinker.”

Oh.