The World is Not Rosy & Delicate. Law Schools and Senior Police Officers Need To Grow Some Balls & Stop Pretending That It Is. 

A couple of weeks ago I rang a friend at midnight and said “talk to me and make me laugh…” He didn’t ask any questions he just did as I asked. Half an hour later, after I was back to my usual self, he said ” so what was it this time?” I told him about the CCTV I’d just watched.. A youth turning into a street where I knew he was going to be killed, and how for the next 7 minutes I’d watched him die on CCTV.

My friend is a cop and I do the same for him when he has been to a particularly bad road accident, has entered a house to find a decomposing body, or been first on the scene to a stabbing. It’s what we do, we don’t shy away from it. I won’t say it doesn’t have an effect on us because it does, we are at opposite ends of the spectrum, me a Defence lawyer, him a cop in a big city, but we have chosen our jobs and enjoy our jobs. If we didn’t, we would have stuck at them all these years.
So It concerns me that warnings are being given out to students in criminal law lectures. The reality is that those who want to practice criminal law need to be able to represent the client no matter what. That CCTV may have affected me when I first watched it, but by the time it is shown to a jury I have to be fully composed. My client needs to know that I will fight their case, not fall at the first difficult hurdle. There is no point in treating students with kid gloves they need to see the World for what it is, and if they don’t like it, now is the time to get out, not when they are sitting in an interview room at the police station while a client is being shown photos of a young child he is alleged to have beaten and raped.
There will be those who say ‘ but not all crime is as serious as your cases’ and fortunately that’s right, but as a police station legal representative, you can’t pick and choose your cases, you get what is in the cells, or alternatively what your own client is alleged to have committed. And as a defence barrister you take on a case, no matter what, you don’t pick and choose the ‘nice’ ones.

I’m increasingly worried about the way we are training and treating the lawyers of the future.. Last year I was on a pupillage training committee (not with my chambers) and sat through hours of students providing vanilla answers to the vanilla question ‘who would you invite to a dinner party and why?’ I swear if one more student said ‘Nelson Mandela I was going to shoot myself! In an effort to liven up the session, I provided a photo of a woman who had a very large bum implant and asked ‘5 reasons why you would, and 5 reasons why you wouldn’t’. Apparently that wasn’t professional and I was encouraged the leave the committee.

The fact is, life isn’t vanilla, as a lawyer, in whatever area of law you practice, people rarely come to you happy, and with easy to resolve problems. Being a lawyer is about thinking and arguing through a problem to get your client the best result possible & hopefully justice. It’s not about not being offended and not offending anyone else.

Today, Greater Manchester Police have apologised for words shouted during their terrorist training exercise. Well quite frankly, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester should be ashamed of himself for allowing an apology to be given. Terrorist attacks happen.. And it’s only a matter of time before another one happens on UK soil. I want emergency services and a public who are able to respond as effectively as possible, and that involves being faced with realism. Many of those same people complaining about Allahu Akbar being shouted probably have Homeland or the Following or 24 on their tv box as their favourite shows. It’s ok to watch this stuff on the tv, but in real life, where it could actually affect them? No, let’s pretend that doesn’t happen… Well 7/7, Paris and Brussels airport tell us otherwise.
We are moving to a society where everyone has to be protected from everything, social media has a lot to do with this.  It’s very easy for a person to complain to the World from the comfort of their sofa. But those same people may be shopping in a major city when a terrorist attack occurs, and although I’d very much love a real life Kevin Bacon to turn up and save me, the reality is, it’s much more likely to be a PC who was involved in one of those training exercises and who has learnt from it, who runs towards the scene. I think I can put money on it not being the apologetic Chief Constable!