PI Brief Update

KillingTime

Went out for a drink last night with a friend from college who is now working for a very posh city solicitors firm.  Somewhat gratified to hear that their standards are no higher than the ditch that is personal injury law.

‘It’s easy BabyB.  Our target is 2,400 hours a year and I had already hit it by mid-November.  You see, the thing is, solicitors measure their time in units of six minutes.  So even if a letter, telephone call or simply looking at the papers only takes 10 seconds, you can still bill one unit.’

‘Right…’ I said slowly, thinking that I could see where this was going.

‘Yes.  So all you need to do is have ten files on the go at once.  Then move from file to file during the day.  I tend to manage to bill six minutes for every minute I work on this system.  Works out at forty-eight hour days.  You don’t need many of them.’

Well, quite.  Kind of reminds me of that joke about the lawyer who died aged forty and was standing before Saint Peter at the pearly gates.

‘I’ll sue.  I am only forty.  I don’t smoke, I don’t drink and I take regular exercise.  There’s no way I should be dead.’

That is, until Saint Peter goes off and checks the records and replies,

‘Well, according to your times sheets, you should be a hundred and thirty years old already.’

BabyBarista is a fictional account of a junior barrister written by Tim Kevan. You can buy the latest BabyBarista novel, 'Law and Peace' on Amazon. The cartoons are by Alex Williams, author of The Queen's Counsel Lawyer's Omnibus.