‘Work’: Desperate Need for Legal PR

March 24, 2009

bartleby2.jpg

What, no songs about office life? Yes, this would appear to be true, for as the FT has it – reporting on last week’s Guardian list of the 1,000 best pop songs ever written – there was virtually nothing on the joys of sitting behind a desk, talking on the phone, attending board meetings, going to conferences and commuting back and forth with hundreds of thousands of fellow sufferers.

Why is this, we wonder? Is it because pop singers have negligible experience of office life, and so cannot translate its highs and lows into song? Or, if we agree that songs are akin to poetry (at their best, anyway), is it because there isn’t a huge amount of poetry in office life?

Perhaps Herman Melville’s immortal office clerk, Bartleby, embodies the unfortunate lack of inspiration to be found in an office. Connoiseurs of American literature will recall that Bartleby the Scrivener is hired by a lawyer to help with general office duties, not least proofreading. However, to this, and every task he is asked to perform, he merely says: “I would prefer not to.” Bartleby prefers not to do anything, even to relocate when the lawyer, exasperated by his seeming inability to do other than stare forlornly at the brick wall outside his window, moves offices. Instead, he remains in his employer’s former dwelling, haunting its hallways, preferring not to leave. Eventually he is forcibly removed and imprisoned, but the lawyer, somewhat atypically in literary fiction, is a kindly man. He bribes the prison guards to ensure that Bartleby is well fed, only to find, when he visits the prison a few days later, that Bartleby is dead. Why? Because, when given his sumptuous food, he said: “I would prefer not to.”

Pop singers, it would seem, prefer not to write songs about office life. However, it’s not all bad, and Bartleby was not only an extreme creation but he was, at the end of the day, a work of fiction. In the real world, that dread four-letter word – work – needs some positive PR.  Perhaps, given the story’s lawyerly backdrop, this is one for legal PRs?

Image courtesy of Cornell University Library. 

 

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When a lawyer’s son is before the law

September 8, 2010

A lawyer of Swordplay’s acquaintance finds himself in a fix.

“My teenage son is to be interviewed by the local constable,” he tells us. “He is alleged to have committed an offence.”

We gasp, for such seems the appropriate response, and then ask: is it serious?

“No, it is not,” our troubled legal friend tells us. “In the great scheme of things, my son’s alleged transgression is about as de minimis as they get.”

For a split second, we wonder if said teenage son is cognisant of lawyerly terms of art such as de minimis, but rapidly conclude that the answer to this question is not a sine qua non of further discourse. And so we press on. That sounds good, we say, relatively speaking, at least.

“Yes,” says the lawyer, “but I am at a loss as to what to do with him. Do I come down hard and ground him, or do I play the liberal card, or do I find a compromise?”

That depends, we aver.

“On what?” asks our man.

On whether you would prefer to deal with your son’s alleged offence as a lawyer, or as a father, or as a father who is a lawyer, or maybe even as a lawyer who is a father.

“I see your point,” says the lawyer. And then, as if to prove that there is no cure for recidivism, he says: “The offence is, after all, de minimis.”

Without prejudice, we add.

Pictured: something out of Kafka. Now there was a man who knew about the law. And had a tough old father, too.

Max Mosley and Wayne Rooney: bedfellows?

September 6, 2010

We rarely enjoy pondering Max Mosley – the man, the sins, the legal action, what he stands for – but confess to a degree of grudging admiration for his tenacity in trying to change the law of privacy. As this story from the Independent has it, Mosley has lodged a request with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg asking that, by law, journalists must inform the subject of a story of the private details they intend to print, prior to publication.

We suspect the motor racing man would never have thought it, but he would appear to have an unlikely bedfellow in a certain England footballer. Step forward, Wayne Rooney, who would presumably put his name to Mosley’s petition.

Pictured courtesy of NashvilleScene: some bedfellows are stranger than fiction.


Memo to Freelance Writers: return that editor’s call quickly

September 3, 2010

Woe betide those who freelance and fail to return a call.

We say this upon hearing of a normally prolific freelance journalist who picked up a voicemail from an editor at one of the nationals on Tuesday afternoon. Please call us, was the message, and it could mean just one thing – a commission.

Our hero’s habitual practice is to return such calls as soon as is reasonably practicable, as m’learned friends might put it. In practice, that would habitually mean within a couple of hours. Most atypically, and for reasons we have yet to fathom, our man failed to call back for a full 24 hours.

By then, said editor had looked elsewhere. One of our man’s competitors had the gig, an interesting piece about cricket and the law, one which might just be in The Times today and which, we assume, asks whether the Pakistan cricket team have been caught out (in the legal sense, you understand).

We make no judgement on the no ball scandal, save to say that it is a scandal, but in another sense the moral is clear: in the fast-paced world of modern media, he who hesitates is lost.

Pictured courtesy of PrintedClothing.com: a fast-selling shirt.