As men­tioned pre­vi­ously Geeklawyer did a bit of minor crim­i­nal work recently: a bail appli­ca­tion before a Crown Court judge. It was inter­est­ing to see how the other half live. The rob­ing room was a pit of mis­er­able despair; Legal aid bar­ris­ters with 6 o’clock shad­ows (includ­ing some females) hov­ered around in thread­bare suits sev­eral decades old and cheap scuffed shoes. Geeklawyer is sure that he noticed more than one who appeared to be drink­ing tins of white light­ning cider out of brown paper bags. Female solicitor-advocates fed gin to their mewl­ing brats to qui­eten them in the back of the court.

Geeklawyer was a tri­fle alarmed at his brief, both in its prospects and its tim­ing. His head of cham­bers was unable to get the papers from instruct­ing solic­i­tors until late at night despite a court appear­ance being first on the list at 9.45am the fol­low­ing morn­ing. This is, appar­ently, fairly stan­dard. How the devil is a chap sup­posed to do a decent job when given mere hours notice to read 30 odd pages of instruc­tions? What if Geeklawyer had been going out to din­ner that night? Truly, Geeklawyer thinks, the crim­i­nal Bar is a fucked up place and he pities its denizens.

The instruc­tions them­selves were a piti­ful tale. Some vile cur had spent two years bat­ter­ing his wife while in an alco­holic daze. Finally his wife was pro­voked to com­plain about him but the sys­tem gave him bail until he appears to have decided it was incon­ve­nient and he had bet­ter things to do than turn up to court. Arrest fol­lowed as inevitably as pupilettes offer­ing sex­ual favours for a pupil­lage. On the face of it then the prospect was of attempt­ing to obtain bail for a fel­low who had nowhere else to go but back to the mar­i­tal home and a wife he beat-up and who was an alco­holic prospec­tively abroad at xmas when more alco­hol than nor­mal is con­sumed. Not a promis­ing brief it would seem.

Geeklawyer is very proud that he man­aged to get him uncon­di­tional bail with min­i­mal advo­cacy. After obtain­ing bail and being released by the judge Geeklawyer expressed, in pass­ing, his plea­sure at suc­cess obtained while not hav­ing to engage in much ora­tory. The judge flashed back:

“Yes Mr [Geeklawyer] I usu­ally find that’s for the best”

He was an ami­able witty old chap and since the put-down was not directed at Geeklawyer but to the dere­licts (bar­ris­ters that is, not defen­dants) he nor­mally had before him Geeklawyer felt dis­in­clined to destroy him for such impu­dence.