This was, again, very enjoy­able. Geeklawyer remains of the view that the series’ obses­sion with pretty young pho­to­genic stu­dents like ‘Cat’ dis­tort what might be a rather more infor­ma­tive doc­u­men­tary. Yes of course in terms of audi­ence rat­ings this is needed, but is this a doc­u­men­tary or ‘real­ity’ tv?

Anna was seen to con­tinue with her aca­d­e­mic strug­gles and to have to undergo the tra­di­tional vol­un­tary fingernail-pulling that is the pupil­lage inter­view. The inter­view­ers at one cham­bers did not come across well: when asked one ques­tion, Anna responded with a mild imi­ta­tion voice to add colour to her point — I’d not have done it but it hardly seemed a career killing crit­i­cism. The unnamed  inter­viewer (Bernard Rich­mond per­haps? the camera-work does not allow one to be clear) responds with “in that voice, do they?” Which shows how ten­u­ous the gap between suc­cess and fail­ure and how pathetic the ratio­nales for rejec­tion often are.

Cather­ine ‘Cat’ Pearsey was def­i­nitely a fig­ure of huge sym­pa­thy. Hav­ing taken four years to get to the point of being called to the Bar the poor cow then suf­fers an entirely typ­i­cal slew of mass rejec­tions. She was nearly in tears on a num­ber of occa­sions through­out the episode and even Geeklawyer’s nor­mal pro­cliv­ity to laugh at the dis­tress of oth­ers was mostly ame­lio­rated. Her unmer­ited fail­ure was jux­ta­posed with the smug supe­ri­or­ity & poorly based self-confidence of the dim slimey Ick­bal who got a pupil­lage at some rea­son­able North­ern set. Geeklawyer remains firmly of the hope she suc­ceeds and that Ick­bal fails to get a tenancy.

Paul Dar­ling QC came across as a bit of a star, being almost improb­a­bly kind and help­ful to benighted aspi­rants. He advised Cat she wasn’t good enough for cer­tain cham­bers (“You’re going to have to be a lit­tle bit real­is­tic, to be blunt, … the absolute stel­lar intel­lec­tual sets are look­ing for the absolute top first class degree… and you haven’t got one”) and how she could opti­mise her chances at oth­ers. This scene was prob­a­bly not a “put up” job; the great thing about the Bar is that many senior mem­bers will indeed give up their time for free to help begin­ners. Geeklawyer can attest that when he was a pupil his pupil-master men­tioned sev­eral times that it was a way of “pay­ing back” the profession.

Geeklawyer is of the view that those with suf­fi­cient capa­bil­ity and deter­mi­na­tion can always get to the Bar: the ones who give up after a dozen rejec­tion let­ter and become solic­i­tors gen­er­ally lack the resilience to fail­ure to be suited to it. Cat must surely suc­ceeds since she is capa­ble, wants it badly and is dogged.

Geeklawyer did won­der why the pro­gram kept refer­ring to pupils “get­ting jobs” at cham­bers. A pupil­lage is not a ‘Job’: it is train­ing, or even a form of appren­tice­ship, and that word was improp­erly used in the pro­gram. The pub­lic very rarely under­stand that the Inde­pen­dent Bar is self employed, even when they are shar­ing cham­bers together: none of them has ‘a job’.

One of the ter­rors of the Bar finally appears: ‘The Clerk’. Here it was Mark Mansell head clerk at St Philips Cham­bers in Birm­ing­ham. The clerk is explained away as merely as a diary man­ager which is a short-falling of this episode. A truer expla­na­tion of the servile nature between a barrister’s clerk and the bar­ris­ter would have been more exciting:

“Head Clerk: Mr [Geeklawyer] I under­stand your daugh­ter is 16 today?

Geeklawyer: Yes Mr Clerk, sir.

Head Clerk: Excel­lent. Have her bathed, per­fumed, dressed in sus­penders and brought to me tomor­row. I wish to deflower her.

Geeklawyer: My fam­ily is blessed that you should choose to hon­our us so.

Head Clerk: Get out.

Geeklawyer: Yes Mr Clerk, sir.”

The pro­gram pieces with Birm­ing­ham fam­ily bar­ris­ters Louise McCabe Alis­tair Mac­Don­ald were well done and showed prag­matic and unpre­ten­tious indi­vid­u­als with their feet on the ground. The dif­fi­cult point for Mac­Don­ald was when his client finally admit­ted to unin­ten­tion­ally hurt­ing his child, notwith­stand­ing a pro­longed denial. MacDonald’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of his client sounded a bit thin and one could almost sense the audi­ence say­ing “Yea but you knew all along didn’t you? So why play along. You bar­ris­ters are always play­ing the sys­tem.” This is  stan­dard crit­i­cism of all lawyers and it was one the pro­gram didn’t address, which was a shame and an oppor­tu­nity lost since Mac­Don­ald would have had pow­er­ful responses to such pop­ulist jibes. Mac­Don­ald  asserted that the Bar was one of the last pro­fes­sions “where just plain hard work, wher­ever you come from, can get you were you want to go”. Which is, tech­ni­cally, bollocks.

So the pro­gram con­tin­ues to develop well. The bal­ance is wrong but it is engag­ing TV anyway.