So, fed up of having sand kicked in your face? Want to set yourself apart from the herd? Want to make yourself more attractive to the opposite sex? Why not apply for Silk? Here is Ruthie’s easy step by step guide…
1. Start being extra nice to all your professional contacts. You’ll need them for references (10 required).
2. Dig a big hole.
3. Throw money in (3k to be precise)
4. Fill in a long form, send off your references.
5. Wait
6a. Failure, whoops, better luck next time. Start again from the top next year.
6b. Success!! Now..continue
7. Dig a big hole
8. Throw money in (3.5k)
9. Buy fancy clothes (700 quid)
10. Organise party and other sundries (2k)
11. Change your email address from joebloggs@mail.co.uk to joebloggsqc@mail.co.uk
11. Wait
12. Hope that the premium you can charge for doing work as a silk makes up for the value of all the work you can no longer do.
For further information check out the website or send 50 quid in non sequential notes in a brown envelope to Ruthie marked “Get me Silk”. You may still not get silk, but Ruthie promise to invest the money back into the blog. Or a new snowboard.
<!–adsense#mediumrectangle–>
What a strange post! Heavens, it’s almost as if one of your numerous lovers were applying for silk and you had become suddenly interested in a process with no direct relevance to you.
Surprised that Dan hasn’t been on to discuss Silk stockings!. Good post though!
Ruthie… how are you? Looking forward to the conference…. have a very long speech prepared….Can I bring one of my film crews to record it… (Not my speech)
Seriously… might be interesting for other bloggers?? Of course, anonymity (for those who seek it) can be guaranteed. I can film them in the dark… with a bright light behind them…Crime Watch style
[…] Expensive fancy dress I enjoyed this post by Ruthie on geeklawyer. The whole system of “taking silk” is typical of our legal system - elitist and archaic. What other job application requires payment of a £3000 fee? Come to that, what other application requires the payment of any fee? Not that I feel sorry for the applicants - they obviously have money to burn, and know that if they’re successful they’ll have the privilege of charging an enormous premium for doing the same work. However, the real reason for applying is not the money, but the chance to look extremely silly in public - their ‘ceremonial dress’ including black breeches and black stockings instead of trousers, patent leather Court shoes with buckles, the same black frock coat and waistcoat seen when in Court but with added lace trimmings, white cotton gloves, a wig with a black rosette and, of course, a silk gown. […]
Geeklawyer: do you mean to tell me you have not applied this year?
I have never applied. They keep writing and phoning me begging me to apply but as an ardent republican I refuse to attach the ignoble deferential prefix “Queen’s” to my name.
One of the traditions of the English Legal System (I use it in the widest sense…not as a description of our legal system) - but it has to be said, our tolerance as a people - is such… that anyone who wishes to dress up in silk (stockings, dressing gowns, England football strip., gowns worn by ‘Silks’.. or, indeed, any other form of silk may do so without contravening the law of our sceptred isle - so long as they do not park on the pavement in a vehicle and attract the attention of ‘Mr Dull’ - empowered to issue PCN’s (Parking control notices).
The fact that I was almost given a ‘PCN’ by a man in his late fifties with a ponytail, with a power crazed expression, this very morning - and felt tempted to ask why he was doing such a job - is neither here nor there.
I believe in freedom… if becoming a silk or wearing silk is your idea of pleasure - make it so.
GEEKLAWYER… now you are asking us to count… we are not chartered gorillas…. lawyers do not count… why are you making us add 5 + 10 so that we can post on your blog. I am seeking advice…
Ruthie… do you know any lawyers (male, obviously) who wear ‘Silk garments under their suits.’
For the avoidance of doubt - I do not know of any lawyers who do wear silk under their suits - I must get out more.
Christ… now I have to add 5 + 6… if I continue to post on this blog I will soon be qualified to be a member of CIMA or some other accounting related professional body.
5 + 6 = 11 - but what if you believe in string theory? (Over to you, Geeklawyer)
Do you think Geeklawyer is enjoying watching those who wish to comment struggle with elementary mathematics ?
To Geeklawyer: OK smartarse, what is the fourth root of 3021?
To Charon: I’m making good money from refraining to disclose the names of senior members of the bar who wear sexy silk undies..
To Mary: now I now what Geeklawyer is referring to when he talks about his “little tiddler”
@geeklawyer: I’ve always found that Akismet plus Bad Behaiour (http://www.bad-behavior.ioerror.us/) does the trick - no spam gets through. Spam Karma, IMHO, isn’t so great - which is perhaps why you need the mathematical-based stuff which so befuddles Charon QC.
Does this mean you’ve upgraded to WP 2.1? Any good? I am stuck on 2.0.4, for fear of breaking all the hacks (and I can’t remember how to replicate any of them).
WP2.1 is pretty good its faster because they have optimised the database lookups. They have also altered the layout of various admin panels to make them slightly easier. The thing I like is auto-saving stories: I occasionally lost stories due to accidental deletion but WP2.1 auto-save rescues me from this risk. Its a worthy upgrade. Whenever I modify a file I now preserve a copy elsewhere on the file-system, then if I upgrade or change themes I copy it back, this usually works YMMV.
Spam karma works fine for me. I’ve not seen an Akismet Spam-karma shootout so I have no idea which is better. Most of the spam gets dumped into a moderation page rather than hitting the front page but that still annoys me and the Captchas or maths buttons seem to kill it stone dead, though trackback crap still hits the junk pile. Trouble is I don’t want to kill trackback as it is useful on very rare occasions.
Sounds interesting - I may, at some point in the not very near future, give the upgrade a go.
Having said that, the auto-save feature is slightly redundant for me, as I use Windows Live Writer to post all items to conflictoflaws.net.
By the way, I meant Spam Karma or Bad Behaviour PLUS Akismet. The combination of two out of the three should mean you don’t have to resort to other methods. Akismet has blocked 1034 spams on conflictoflaws.net so far this month, AND Bad Behaviour has blocked 433 “access attempts” in the last 7 days. In other words, they are not mutually exclusive. I have also not yet had a single false-positive, although the site does not attract half as many comments as yours (hey, it’s a slightly esoteric subject, I admit.)
Martin, I’m such a lamer, than when you mentioned giving the upgrade a go I assumed you were applying for Silk!!!
I’ve just checked out your website, and and was both impressed and mystified as to why you find this site interesting. I can only attribute the levels of interest and comments to my pink leathers; its certainly not our deep intellectual insight…although I’m sure Geeklawyer would beg to differ…
Ruthie in leathers is, of course, the primary reason for subscribing to your RSS feed.
Perhaps you could, when publishing a new post, add a different photo of Ruthie in various guises. Said guise could be voted for by the readers of the site on something like a monthly basis. You could make millions, Rodney, millions!
Thanks for the nice words about the site, Ruthie. I may have to hire you out in order to get discussion flowing over there, although I’m not sure, given the subscribers (which include a Law Lord and a Lord Justice of Appeal), that you would be an entirely appropriate “marketing tool” (didn’t mean to reduce to an object there).
And geeklawyer, if conflicts floats your boat, then come to the conference in June! It’s got 14 CPD hours…
I’m actually with Geeklawyer on this one; bizarrely I find private international law fascinating, although if you try and steal me for your blog, Geeklawyer will be round with the boys..
If you read the blog regularly you will know that, according to Geeklawyer my “numerous” lovers include a High Court Judge, a QC and a “minor junior”. It would be nice to add a Law Lord to the list, just to get a full set so to speak…
As for a monthly picture of Ruthie..er well I’m flattered at the suggestion, but I don’t think Geeklawyers ego would cope, and until I can make more money from selling autographed photos than doing law, I have to do some work occassionally. Don’t worry about “reducing me to an object”: as you observe, this blog gets more comments than yours….
If only my love life were one tenth as exciting as Geeklawyer implies it to be, I could sell my life story to the News of the Screws and retire to a private Caribbean Island.
Anyway sorry to disappoint you Martin. You’ll just have to make do with a few comments on the side
Martin: a quick question. PhD in law. Why?
(Please answer in less than 2000 words and be sure to clearly indicate your reasoning.)
The short answer: why not?
The slightly less short answer: after several vac schemes in magic circle firms, I realised that I would rather have a small badger gnaw my right leg off over a period of several years than go through the pain and suffering of working as a solicitor there. So, I turned down the offer of a training contract and, in order to spend some time figuring out what I’d like to do, went and did an LLM. And I quite liked it. I thought that the academic life might be quite a nice one, so I went after a PhD scholarship (PhDs are generally a pre-requisite if you want to be an academic, you know). And here I am.
Reasoning? Pah.
Ruthie: for a PhD you get examined by viva voca on your written thesis. 2000 words would generally be regarded as a poor thesis. Or a stunningly brilliant one.