“Tempus fugit (Ovid) et Veritum dies aperit (Seneca).”

22 July, 2008

Dominic's Diary

Time passes and discovers the truth. It is now more than three months since the commencement of my second seat in the Litigation department of Teacher Stern LLP. Contrary to my initial fears, I have not had to endure endless days (mis)spent in a vicious cycle of photocopying, paginating and bundling. In fact, I am thankful that the workload has remained of a consistently varied and challenging level throughout – I can certainly refute any notion of the English judiciary wandering off to the pavilion at Lords for the duration of June and July.  

In essence, the mainstay of my workload for the last couple of months has involved assisting my firm’s senior property litigation partner with the winding-up of a number of public and private limited companies – which is perhaps an apposite reflection of the current turmoil in the financial markets. I have also of late been working alongside one of the department’s commercial litigators in relation to two separate debt recovery claims, one of which was initiated by me writing a letter before action at the beginning of April and which has now progressed to a full case management conference, scheduled for early autumn.

I would have to say that from my own perspective, the most interesting and intellectually stimulating work, which I have thus far encountered in the Litigation department has involved the law in relation to sports, defamation and privacy. It is undoubtedly one of the great benefits of my present seat that I have been able both to share an office and work directly with the firm’s managing partner, Graham Shear, whose expertise is in precisely these areas. Obviously, being involved at such an early stage in my legal career with civil cases which may set legal precedent, has made two years of legal study on the GDL/LPC seem completely worthwhile.

On a lighter note, I am pleased to report that since last week’s instalment of the Diary, I have managed to book myself a two week holiday in Georgia. By Georgia, of course, I mean the republic rather than the state – though I would certainly not be averse to a vacation spent amongst the ante bellum mansions of the American deep south. Indeed, while the current political situation in the republic of Georgia is also somewhat bellicose, the thought of lying on some hideous, polluted, overcrowded beach in the Mediterranean strikes me as being nothing short of a “vision of hell” – which is probably the exact location where the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting when he coined that infamously misanthropic aphorism…(answers on a postcard).