Lethargy rules O....

It's official. It is a game of two halves.

Well at least a course of roughly equally halves.

Well, more 60/40 but that's pretty close, right?

(though saying that, if the College offered me a 40% mark as opposed to a 50% one I would be pretty miffed)

Anyhow, the point of all this drivel is just how much the compulsories have differed from the electives. For the compulsries, I reckon I was working about 50-55 hours a week-for these electives it seems much more like 25-30 hours.

And I don't like it.

No really, that may qualify as the most bizarre statement in a year of trying-but I really am not happy with the fact that the work has dropped off. The obvious reply is to spend more hours on each of my electives and push myself to the limit but there seems an infectious atmosphere of lethargy around. As if the College acknowledges that the worst is over and this is a time for those souls without jobs to be sending off applications.

The consequence is that all my bad habits are back with a vengeance. I try to get my work done as quickly as possible-there is no pride in what I do. I have to hand in some work for my crim tutor to look at this week but since it doesn't affect my final mark one way or the other, I've made a derisory attempt at it and no more.

Luckily this is the last week before half term. What? 'More holidays' I hear you cry. And this is an excellent indicatation of what I'm talking about. We had (just under) two weeks away from college before the exams, a week and a bit away after them and now just 4 weeks into the electives we are off for another 2 weeks (2 and a half in my case cos my last class is on Weds with nothing to Monday in mid-April.

I'm desperately hoping that I can work up a head of motivation during this period. I have a mental timetable where I spend an hour a day on each elective andf provided I do this seriously it should certainly help.

If only I didn't have my bad habits...

Oh well, as a famous philosopher once said, "if wishes were ponies we all would ride"

Right, back to the job in hand. Employment already has the feeling of a jinxed course. Second week, second different tutor-and we still haven't seen the proper one yet. (The rumour is now that she won't show for this week either-but we should have her back after Easter..).
We also have been set 'proper' tables (so I've been separated from Biff...shame!). The good news is that there are two members of my original tutorial group on my table. The bad news-neither of them showed up.

"I'm Jinxed, I tell yers"

Luckily, the tutor we had was a sight better than the previous one.

Slight bit of a problem in that it was the PLS tutor from my ill-fated stay on that course (and he remembered me) but we didn't overrun this week. Well, not by much...

It's kind of weird. We had a workshop on 'wrongful dismissal'; it took 2 1/2 hours and at the end we covered a tad more than in the Business Law compulsary workshop that also covered Unfair dismissal, redundancy and the free movement of workers.

There is a feeling that some of these classes may be a slight bit padded, shall we say?


Tuesday was a long day (by my pitiful standards). I left for school at 8.30. This is the only morning class I have had at the College and it still throws me.
I like to do a few hours prep in the morning before I head off-it fits nicely with my work style and I can go to class with the work lingering at the back of my head. The problem with early starts is that I have a tendency to day dream from about 4pm (the end of the workshops-see later)

Anyhow, Tuesday is crim day. I got to the class fairly early and took my appointed seat. I couldn't help but notice that I was the only one on the table. I am perceptive like that. The class filled up, all the other tables had 4 or 5 people and I was sitting alone. I naturally made the quick furtive movement to sniff my shirt. Hmm, not as bad as it has been...

Eventually, someone else turned up. Good job too, one of my nightmares is to be the only person on the table and have to answer every single question asked. Since I don't like speaking in public, I am having a growing suspicion that this may not be quite the right job for me after all...

The workshop began with a fun task based on our prep. We had been asked to review an interview between 2 police officers and a 'villain'. Sitting in on the interview was a solicitor who should object to particular questions or approaches by the police. They hadn't made a good job of it so we had been asked to point out places where we could intervene.

On our tables, each of the students was given a role in the script and had to read the interview aloud for the class. Then a neighbouring table would stand up and call out 'objection' at the relevant bits.

It's fair to say that there was a possible objection on nearly every single line spoken by the police but it was still good fun-whether playing it up on the script or making interventions on behalf of your client (and having to justify exactly what you were objecting to!)

Later in the class we were also introduced to a new problem type-the Critical Incidence Test. Some 30% of the exam will come from written versions of these and for those who want to qualify as an accredited representative at police stations they will have to do this to an incident played from a recorded medium.
The candidate then gets 30 seconds to think about their response before giving it first person to the examiner. These tests combine professional ethics with practical theory and some criminal law. We went over a few examples in class and I did a few solo this morning. They are tricky devils, no doubt-I'm sure that I will improve with practice but I'm definitely struggling at present.

Here's an example;
"You are your firm's duty adviser this evening and it is 19.20 hours when the telephone rings. the person on the other end of the line says;

Good evening, it's Sergeant Holmes from York police station. I've got one of your clients, Mr X, who is just about to go into interview but he wants a quick bit of legal advice first. I'll put him on now."

That's it. From that you need to identify what you believe the issues are and summarise your response to these issues. There should be about 4-8 responses for each.

The answer will be given next week (as soon as I know it!)

The large group lectures are not getting any better. A brilliant tutor but a bloody awful lecturer-shame. I've heard more interest and enthusiasm in the voice of the shipping forecast reader. This week, we touched on funding and spent a lot of time looking at bail and especially absconding (now that's a great word!)

I had put my name down for a lecture given by a prospective employer that evening, so rather than go home and come back (thus wasting 1 1/2 hours) I decided to work in the library and do my consolidation from Monday/Tuesday. With hindsight, that was one of those 'great ideas at the time' that when you do them don't work out quite as well.

I had quite forgotten just how loud the noise that people make when they're working quietly. (and that's not including those people who go to quiet rooms so they can have loud discussions without being disturbed)

To my credit, I did work right up to 5.45 and didn't once tell the noisy basas to 'shut the (word deleted for reasons of decorum) up'.

But I was sorely tempted...

The talk. This was presented by the confusingly named LPC, which I think stands for 'Legal Practice Clerks'. I say 'think' because now I come to look at the bumpf I picked up (including a free-pen) and the web-site (LPC-law.co.uk) there is no explanation of the acronym. How weird is that? The talk was given by two guys, one a smartly suited bloke who you just know has a side-line in used cars. The other was a younger man who had studied for the BVC (barristers qualification similar to the LPC) but had taken up work with this LPC (still keeping up?) and was now a senior advocate for them.

It was a fairly slick affair although it only took about 30 minutes (and that includes a question and answer session). There was a high proportion of the mature end of the spectrum-I guess we are all getting a bit desperate as the end of the course approaches...

This LPC are a sort of...legal sub-contractors, I suppose. Large law firms with more cases than staff or no staff in the jurisdiction of the claim hire advocates from this bunch. This works out cheaper for them than sending their own guys. They get a cut, LPC get a cut and the advocate gets a cut (no doubt the smallest cut for the guy who's actually doing the work...)

And that's it in a nutshell. LPC will get the cases for you then send you the paperwork with about 4 days notice of trial. You research the case and the law and then present it before a judge in chambers (not a courtroom). They reckon you should be doing about 4 a day. If you want to do a lesser week then you can do-you are self-employed and work as much as you can (or as little as you want). The only thing they ask for is six month commitment.

So have I applied? Not yeeeeet. I am still in two (or more) minds. It sounds good-not a training contract but excellent experience and they claim a lot of their staff go on to TCs-and that may be the catch.

• They seem to have a very high turnover of staff-about a 1/3 of their personnel change a year.
• Plus, there's the self-employed thing.
• Plus, it's work for big employers who want to repossess property, make people bankrupt and chase debts. All the things that I swore I would never do-that I wanted to protect the 'little man' and fight in his corner.
  

Question Principles are all well and good but is a roof over my head and food in the fridge more important?

Still, something to think about...


Back in College on Weds for Immigration. This is still a minefield of a subject for me-loads of room to put my foot in it. This is not helped by a non-standard start time (Every previous afternoon class has started at 1.30-This one starts at 1.45-and he still overruns..).
This means that by 4pm I'm in my sloooooooooow mode-but we still have up to half an hour to run. This is not a lot of joy for my poor classmates-who have to put up with the drooling vegetable that is me at that time who would be totally unable to tie my shoelaces-let alone answer a question on immigration legislation.

Interestingly we have been told that the legislation we are studying is already partly out of date and will probably be totally wrong by the time we get out into the real world. Oh good, just as long as I'm not wasting my time then...

Actually-with hindsight, 'minefield' is not quite the right term. It reminds me more accurately of an alleyway that I used to have to walk down to visit a former girlfriend in Exeter. It was not lit and was used on a daily basis as a doggy toilet. If there is ever an Olympic sport of 'doggy-doo dodging' then sign me up.

And that's it. During the last 4 days I have done a dribble of work a day. Keeps the doctor away I've been told-or something like that.

And the title? It's an old bit of graffiti-the idea is that someone was writing 'lethargy rules OK' but just couldn't be bothered...