BARRISTERS

Let’s take a long, cool, unemotional and, most importantly, unoverawed look at Barristers. What are the primary talents of a Barrister? Just what qualities does he, or she, need to be successful in this field? Well, an extensive knowledge of the law would be very useful and to this end it would appear that an excellent memory would be a primary requirement. The law is in no way logical, frequently quite the reverse, and therefore no great intelligence is necessary – just the mundane average will do. Like any good Insurance Salesman your Barrister will need the ‘gift of the gab’ he, or she, has to be articulate and able to sell a point of view to the Jury regardless of the qualities of the ‘product’. Watching a Barrister at work one soon realises that one is, in fact, watching a performance and with this realisation comes another – that you are watching an actor at work. From this we can deduce that another required talent is acting ability – the ability to perform before and, indeed, to ‘work’ an audience. So, our Barrister needs to be a memory man, a salesman and an actor. Intelligence is largely irrelevant.

However, we have not yet quite finished. There are very, very few court cases of any description where there is not a result. Virtually always there will be a winner and a loser – almost 50% of each. We can deduce from this that at least 50% of the time someone is not telling the truth – mostly deliberately. This means that at least 50% of the time our Barrister will not be telling the truth. Now, unless we are to include in our list of required talents that Barristers should be the most appallingly inept judges of character on record then we must assume that in at least a very significant proportion of these cases the Barrister concerned is aware of this. In these circumstances our Barrister when putting the case before the court will be lying. This, then, brings us to the fourth, and final talent necessarily required to become a good Barrister. This is the ability to lie fluently, convincingly, with a completely straight face and with a complete disregard for the consequences

I see little, if any evidence that Barristers are at all interested in justice. They are interested in results. Results pay the mortgage. Your Barrister is judged by his, or her, results. Successful Barristers are successful because they win cases. It is supremely irrelevant, in this context, whether or not the cases were actually decided correctly. In this context it matters not whether the innocent are found guilty or the guilty innocent. Justice does not enter into the equation at all. I sometimes wonder whether there is anyone at all in the legal profession who could define the concept of Justice or even recognise it if they tripped over it unannounced. If it will further your Barrister’s career to send an innocent to the gallows – so be it; and it has happened. The guilty have frequently escaped their just deserts and the innocent have too often gone to the gallows. It is an interesting, if unedifying, quirk of human nature that the careers of the Barristers concerned do not seem to have suffered unduly as a consequence of their getting things, sometimes tragically, wrong. The world at large seems to be totally mesmerised by the performance – and its outcome in terms of success or failure.

I am sure that your average Barrister could come up with a choice of words and arguments to refute and overturn what I have written. But remember, their arguments do not have to be true – only convincing. That is what we pay them for; that is the bedrock of their success – being convincing. Truth is expendable, Justice is expendable – the Career, and the success thereof, is paramount. With these talents is it surprising that so many Barristers become M.P.s ?  Ah, but that’s another story!!