Baby Barista — the witness statement

Some­times fic­tion is stranger than the truth. The truth is rarely vis­i­ble in fic­tional accounts of the Bar, from Rumpole, This Life and onwards. We bar­ris­ters are the sub­ject of mal­ice spite and envy from the failed bar­ris­ters in the Cab­i­net right down to the Solicitor-Inadequates at the junior end of the pro­fes­sion, all of whom ped­dle their spite to any tak­ers. At a time when the Bar Coun­cil is des­per­ately attempt­ing, and fail­ing, to counter this black pro­pa­ganda, Baby­Barista enters the fray with his Machi­avel­lian flail­ing, undo­ing all attempts at the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of our image. Excel­lent.

Baby­Barista is a fic­tional pupil at a fic­tional cham­bers and who blogs at The Times. The Art of War is the auto­bi­og­ra­phy of his pupil­lage. BabyB is not a sym­pa­thetic char­ac­ter; like Geeklawyer he is schem­ing manip­u­la­tive amoral dis­loyal cal­cu­lat­ing and back­stab­bing, but none of these virtues off­set his essen­tial bad­ness. His only sal­va­tion comes from the fact that his rival pupils, com­pet­ing against him for the sin­gle prized ten­ancy, are even more loath­some: Third­Six and Top­First are var­i­ously smug supe­rior snob­bish cal­cu­lat­ing and pre­ten­tious. Fine and nec­es­sary qual­i­ties in a bar­ris­ter but not con­ducive to a spirit of camaraderie:

Top­First tele­phoned me over the week­end. He said he wanted to talk about pupillage.

‘Look BabyB, we’re all in com­pe­ti­tion for ten­ancy, but let’s be real­is­tic about this. Wor­rier and Busy­Body are both now dead in the water and it’s devel­oped into a straight fight between you and me.’

‘OK.’ No prizes for that one Mr Brainbox.

‘Well look, I’ve been think­ing. You ever heard of the prisoner’s dilemma?’

‘[…] Yea, shows that cooperation’s often bet­ter than fighting.’

[…]

‘You’re sug­gest­ing a truce. Fine by me,’ I lied.

‘Exactly so. Fight and we may both die. Coop­er­ate and there’s at least a small chance that maybe we’ll con­vince them to take us both on.’

‘Makes sense,’ I lied again. ‘You can count on me.’ […]

… there will be no cooperation.

If you think only the pupils are oily rats then the bar­ris­ters are just older more expe­ri­enced ver­sions: The­Boss — BabyB’s first pupil­mas­ter. An unscrupu­lous, spine­less cow­ard, “You’re up to your neck in this, you realise,’ he told me. ‘If I go down I’m tak­ing you with me.’”; OldSmoothie — a Peter Bowles char­ac­ter; The­Vamp a cock hunt­ing old slap­per;  The­Busker and OldRuin are, among oth­ers, old hack ten­ants in cham­bers who round out the sorry cast. This is one sorry improb­a­ble and deeply doomed set; no doubt soon to merge with Peck­ham Cham­bers and then vanish.

The Art of War is a hilar­i­ous par­ody of the pro­fes­sion and an engag­ing reprise of all the old cliches about us bar­ris­ters. To those of us on the inside it was clearly this and no more: some of the sce­nar­ios were deeply implau­si­ble and the behav­iour of the char­ac­ters way beyond cred­i­bil­ity, although it was this that ren­dered the humour. Geeklawyer wor­ries a lit­tle, and some­what hyp­o­crit­i­cally given his own blog­ging and Twit­ter­ing behav­iour, about whether this will be seen as pure humour by the pub­lic or if  they will really imag­ine that judges and bar­ris­ters will stitch them up just to get a round of golf in on a Fri­day? One really really hopes not.

The Art of War was a side-splitting read that Geeklawyer couldn’t put down: it gets his A+ rec­om­men­da­tion. Open a new browser tab now and order it from Ama­zon immediately.

Tim Kevan, the recently outed ex-anonymous bar­ris­ter behind BabyB, deserves a pat on the back for a great first novel. Geeklawyer hopes the sec­ond will arrive soon.