Former Lawyer-turned-Author blogs

Tom Holt was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines; interests which led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a solicitor and emigrate to Somerset, where he specialised in Death and Taxes for seven years before going straight in 1995. He is now a full-time writer and has written, amongst other titles, ‘You Don’t Have To Be Evil To Work Here, But It Helps’ and ‘The Better Mousetrap’. He writes exclusively for Law and More; divulging his ‘fond’ memories of working within law…

An Ode to Conveyancing

Thirteen years ago, I did my bit for the legal profession by leaving it, thereby at a stroke raising the standards of efficiency, competence, commitment and drive in the provision of legal services in the south west of England by a fistful of percentage points. They were glad to see the back of me, but not nearly as glad as I was to go.
 
At that time, I was singing -
 
I am the very model of a modern-day solicitor,
The type that you’d display to an enquiring Martian visitor.
In all the courts of judicature I delight to play and sing
And I know everything there is to know about conveyancing.
In wills and probate I am versed, ‘cos death is where the future lies,
And everything that humans do I’ll presently computerize;
In that respect my hopes and dreams will scarcely need enlarging, for
There’ll be no limit to the items I can then be charging for.
 
I rip you off and lose your deeds and spend your cash and lie to you
And if you write in to complain I doubt if I’ll reply to you.
The simple I make complex till there’s nothing clear and plain in it.
I write you yards of gibberish, then charge you for explaining it.
And though you sit in silence and observe your savings dwindle, you
Still give me full discretion both to fleece you and to swindle you.
And nervous children point at me and ask their mothers "Is it a
Foul monster from the Black Lagoon?" "No, dear, it’s a solicitor"
 
But while our legal system’s still a cesspit and a mockery
And England’s not a garden but a weed-infested rockery;
And while we hold each problem must contain a germ of fault in it
And while we seek to heal a wound by rubbing loads of salt in it;
And while we’re bound by precedents (that’s cock-ups folk have made before)
And while the courts are all for sale and there’s no justice, only law,
And while the graft and cheating in the system are implicit - ah!
There’ll always be a living for the modern-day solicitor.
 
For trouble is my business; so, however things may run with you,
You know that they’ll be ten times worse when finally I’m done with you.
Although you’d rather take your chances with the Grand Inquisitor,
You know that you’re in trouble when you go to a solicitor.
 
Time and distance have mellowed my views. I no longer wear the T-shirt I had printed with my favourite line from Shakespeare ("Let’s kill all the lawyers"). It helps, of course, that the office where I used to work is now a hairdresser’s; the firm closed not long after I left, evidence that there are some sinking ships where it’s the rats who stay.

But I’m fully prepared to concede that there were faults on both sides. My main problem, apart from a distaste for and sloppy attitude towards the minutiae of procedure, was a distinct lack of - My bosses used to call it ‘drive’, ‘commitment’, ‘killer instinct’, stuff like that. In the current patois of Gordon Ramsay and Mary Queen of Shops, it’d be ‘passion’.

I found it very hard to get passionate about probate and tax planning. I plodded wearily after ambulances instead of chasing. I’d drifted into the profession with a woolly-headed notion that working in a market-town law firm would be sort of James Herriot; a cheery greeting from everybody in the street, a floppy-eared spaniel on the passenger seat as I drove to meet clients, fulfilment, respect and a comfortable living. Well, quite.

I took away from my seven years in the trade a number of valuable items; mostly biros, paperclips and rolls of sellotape, but also such things as practicality, method, a healthy cynicism and an incomparable insight into the worst of human nature, afforded me by both my colleagues and my clients. It may be true that the most fiercely competed-for job in the law is that of Devil’s Advocate (because, sooner or later, He gets the whole of the profession to choose from); I don’t think I’ll be sending in my CV when the time comes. I guess I just don’t have the passion…

Like what you’ve read?  Visit www.tom-holt.com for more madness and Tomfoolery