If cats have 9 lives how may do LPC students get?

My highly perceptive senses are telling me that summer is on the way.

Is it the gentle warmth that permeates the bedroom and means the thick duvet must be put into mothballs?

Or is it the stiffling temperature that allows me to write this whilst wearing shorts and a t-shirt? (not an image which those of a mild disposition should dwell on)

Or is the heaps of dead insects that litter my flat like the victims of some multiple-bug car crash?

Mmm, it might be that last one. I seem to be taking daily work applications from spiders who have heard that there is some sort of 'all you can eat' offer going on at Chez Paul. It may sum my life up when I tell you that I have adopted one of the hairy little multi-legged brutes as a pet and call him 'Desmond'. Unfortunately Des runs whenever he catches sight of me (must be the shorts-he probably recognises my legs as being colonies of spiders clinging onto alabaster pillars)

Damn, this writing business ain't easy. How that JK Rowling does it, I don't know.

Of course, I could just name-drop here and point out that I went to University with ole JK back in the 80's and me and her are just like that (waggles fingers vaguely) and that she cheekily pinched a few of my short story ideas about a teenage wizard called Barry Cotter when she popped in after class one day for a mug of coffee.

..I make an excellent coffee!..

But that would be lying and we don't do lying in the law.

We always give a straight answer to a straight question

Of course, we are all hoping like mad that we don't get asked any straight questions...

Now, astute readers will be wondering where this is all leading (and to be honest so am I) but there is a reason. Bear with me. Amongst all the excitement of this week something rather good has happened.

I have a job interview coming up!

Well actually, I have two!

I am in College, Monday to Weds then I have interviews on Thursday and Friday-this means that I will have to re-arrange my working hours (again) so that in addition to prepping for my classses I can prep for the interviews.

It does however, put me in a bit of a moral dilemma, truthwise (squirms a bit on chair and catches leg hair in swivel mechanism-ouch). I may not have been quite 100% truthful when I applied for one of them. I may just have stretched the truth a tad-I may have mentioned (in passing like) that I had a lot of experience in a certain computer product. Which is nearly totally true-it's just the word 'lot' that may not be quite accurate. Unless of course 'lot' means 'some' or 'a very small amount'.

Hang one, I'll check with the dictionary.

Bugger...

Still, it's not that great a job anyway...

As I may have mentioned, the chance of getting a training contract now is pretty slim-so I'm trying to concentrate on getting in as a lesser position and hoping to work my way up. There is (allegedly) the opportunity to do that in this job (and it's in Guildford-so at least going to the interview won't cost much).

I've just had a rare spot of insight-they are probably lying about the promotion opportunities and that counters my lying about my knowledge!

Sorted!

Two wrongs do make a right after all!

Anyhow, Friday is an entry level position with the CPS in Hampshire-so not too far away there either. Part of the job is advertised as 'receptionist', so I shall have to practice chewing gum and filing my nails.

What do you mean stereotypical prejudice?

As I have remarked before the weeks are flying by-the electives are all now past the half way stage (though I heard this week of someone trying to change to different ones).

Just 4 weeks to go to the exams!

Alas, it does appear that we shall never have our 'proper' employment tutor. There is the faintest chance that she would be worse than temp-loyment but it is such a faint possibility that I shall have to discount it.
This week we started our first workshop on discrimination. We rushed straight into a case about sex discrimination with a female client being asked different questions at a promotional interview to the other (male) candidate.

So far we have looked at direct discrimination (as in the example above),
harassment (violating another person's dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them)

What do you mean I copied that out of the textbook?

and victimisation (picking on an individual because they have brought proceedings in the past against the employer-or are doing so at present)

All good stuff and 'fairly' easy to spot. However, this coming week we'll be looking at 'indirect' discrimination and this may be a tad contentious.

An example from the textbook;
London Underground changed their workers shift patterns to more flexible hours. All of the male workers agreed to them. One of the female workers couldn't work the new hours. In the end it was decided that these new hours were discriminatory-not because of any fact that was relevant in the case but because statistically single mothers outnumbered single fathers by 10-1. (whuh?)

What I found fascinating was that there were 2000+ male workers and 21 female workers. So in fact because 1 out of 2050 workers had a problem, the tribunal (and upheld by the Court of Appeal) decided that the new shift patterns were discriminatory...

Hmm, I have a feeling that this may be Alice in Wonderland law where,

"when I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is', said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty,' which is to be master-that's all.'

(Through the Looking Glass, c.vi)

As I say, a tad contentious...

Tuesday-what are we doing in criminal today? Ah, still dealing with our cannabis possessing benefit cheat and his gradual fall into prison. It's a tricky case this one,

On the one hand, he has a previous for growing cannabis (along with other offences), he was seen with potting compost on his hands and overalls and he has a weed habit.

But on the other, there are none of his fingerprints on any of the cannabis producing items (only a fan and an extension cable-which may have an innocent explanation being items with a possibly innocent use) and he was caught with cannabis from another source.
Which leads me to ask, if he has no money and grows the stuff why does he spend cash he doesn't have to buy it from a dealer?

All very intriguing stuff-I have the suspicion that the CofL like to keep it fairly even like this so that you can't get a biased or jaundiced view against your client. After all, if you think your client is guilty then you might be less inclined to do your best for them-well that's my theory.
The College can't present you with innocent clients though since;

• Statistically, about 93% are stone cold guilty, and
• You would miss out on the stuff about mitigation and appealing

So they have to keep it balanced and then hit you with fresh, overwhelming evidence where the whole defence case collapses like a house in an earthquake (apologies to any readers in Kent)

Recently, I have thinking about my first ever 'case'-it was for a union member back in my Smiths days who was accused of a dismissable offence.
I acted as her advocate and confidant and although she left the company she wasn't dismissed for 'gross misconduct' (with its subsequent problems) but left with 13 weeks pay and a good reference.
Every person that I spoke to in the store (about 60 people) believed that she was guilty of the offence. Only I had no personal view of the matter-even to this day, I don't think she did what she was accused of-she certainly acted foolishly but I don't think dishonestly.

The reason that I have been thinking about it recently-along with the prospect of being thrust into the world of law is that there is a young woman in Welfare who is the spitting image of her and even talks in exactly the same accent! (BTW, they are not related-I have asked!)

With the usual seamless link we now move to Wednesday and welfare. (damn am I so slick at this or what..?).

Well, actually I don't. In fact when I got home on Tuesday I had a surprise-a message on my answerphone. OK, the message did say that it had come on Sunday at about 6pm-but we'll move swiftly on from the fact that I have never got around to setting it properly (or even reading the manual).
The message was that I had been invited to lunch with the external examiners because temp-loyment (god bless her) had thought that I would be an excellent person for them to talk to (BTW I am getting a little concerned that she may have designs on me-I shall have to start shaving my legs)

Well, being an intellectual giant (**cough**) with educated opinions (**double cough**) on everything from indirect discrimination to number theory (**collapses in coughing fit**) I was the obvious choice to take a light repast with some others of equivalent intellects (or other people who have mindless chats to spiders that are running away from them).

Anyhow, the upshot was that I turned up for this lunch (as in fact did half of the workshop group-so much for exclusivity) and we were sat around a table with the external examiner who had a very faint whispery voice and a neck lump.
Now I am not one to mock the afflicted (that would be foolish considering my obvious deficiencies) but this was huge! The guy wore his shirt over it-I fully expected an 'alien' like moment as it burst free and ran under the table...

It was all quite pleasant and we made sure that we said nice things about Tigger and his teaching but I had been hoping to do a bit of networking, schmoozing and brown-nosing. Ho hum.

Interestingly the examiner has two specialities in which he is the outside invigilator. Welfare-especially looking after those with benefit claims and acquistions.
Acquisitions!!
That's kind of a strange combo. Acquisitions is about making money for people who have too much money already. (now I'm wondering if that neck-lump may have been a siamese-twin who handled the welfare side...)

The other thing of note was that of the 7 students around the table, all 4 of the acquisitions people had training contracts with big firms and all 3 of the welfarers are currently unemployed but then...

...our 'star' welfare student joined us. She actually has a job!!!

I made my excuses after about an hour and slipped away to finish my tasks for the workshop.

Which was a bit of a strange one. We had our prep task which was in two parts. We had been given a background reading relating to half a dozen people and were asked,'what benefits did they need?' and 'what benefits could they claim?'.

I don't think anyone did the first part-and we didn't cover the answer in the workshop.

The second part was the entire workshop-we did nothing else (we still overran, mind). We had to go through each of the claims making sure that we followed the checklist fully.

And we didn't finish all of the possible claims either...

Benefits are not going down anywhere as well as immigration did. I am determined to stay positive about them but my classmates are not impressed. The sheer amount of them is pretty daunting-and so far we've only touched non-means tested, non-contributory ones.

During the earlier part of the week I had tried to get my consolidation done because I knew that I would have to dedicate at least a day (or so) in getting back in the swing for advocacy.

Yep, it's that time-one week after picking up the papers I had to do my reassessment. The first thing I noted was how hard it was to get back into the right frame of mind. I last did advocacy in the 2nd week of December and outside of getting my feedback and having a horrid few minutes seeing myself on video, I had tried not to think about it.

The case was not an inspiring one.
A hotel had contracted someone to lay a carpet on their stairs. The hotel had chosen a red carpet with a bold diagonal pattern which the carpet layer had not laid centrally but had bisected the diagonal and ended up putting a triangular block on each side. The hotel were not happy and got a new carpet from a different seller and charged the cost to the originally carpet-layer (who just happened to be on holiday when the claim arrived and only returned home after judgment had been given against her)

And you have to present a case on the carpet layers behalf to get this judgment set aside.

To be fair, the case was not quite as bleak as I have made it. There are small straws to grab to try to make a case and give the judge the idea that if the case were to be tried the defence would have a chance of succeeding.
But again, the hardest part is memorising the litany and putting it all into sensible order. This was made more difficult because although I knew that I wouldn't have an opponent in the reassessment (the College obviously realise that two people who have both already failed the assessment would be a nightmare combination) that means that I have extra litany to remember.

In addition to introducing myself and the firm that I 'work' for I also have to introduce the absent firm and explain their non-attendance and show documents signed by them to that effect.

Anyhow, come Saturday morning I have my script and I am frantically trying to remember it. (the advantage of having no opponent means that you don't have to reply to what they say so it is easier to go by the script).
I should mention though that you are not allowed to have the script in front of you. The College allow some notes but only in bullet points and if you are seen to be reading from a script you are failed automatically.

My memory is pretty good regarding things like cases/dates and the names of statutes but this was not going well.
If I read the script it takes about 10 minutes (and I talk really fast) without it, I stumble along in about 20 minutes. In the assessment I will have about 10 minutes-so things are not looking good.

Then catastophe!
My taxi has arrived-10 minutes early and he's outside repeatedly sounding his horn.! So I grab the last few items, stuff my pockets-hoping I've not forgotten something important and swing my tie round my neck. (A fashion god, me)

The driver does apologise for arriving early-he misread his computer (that's your tip gone, my good man) and we set off.

I get to College and find that all the study rooms are closed and locked-so I have nowhere to go and pace whilst reciting to myself.
Catastrophe number 2!

Luckily I find a corridor and can chant to myself but it still sounds terrible, nothing is coming together...

And finally, the minutes roll by and I have to go to Student services and sign myself in. I am told that there has been a problem and one of the examiners hasn't arrived. So I will be delayed and have to sit in reception and wait.
By now, my demons are coming to torment me and my good friends doubt and despair are sitting on the couch with me.

'You can go up now', the words I do not want to hear are spoken and I climb the stairs to a familiar room. This was where I took my mock assessment (and failed-just).
This does not bode well, the door opens and the assessor is there. It is the same lady who took my mock assessment (that I failed, just) and she motions me in. There is a small Sahara going on inside my mouth-it feels like I've not tasted water for months-I just know that I am going to dry up like in my assessment.

'Are you ready?', the tutor asks. 'I'll never be ready', I reply with a smile.

She smiles back.

At that moment I know that I can pass this. I begin to talk, my litany is smooth. I don't dry up.

• I quote the facts of the case.
  
• I don't get emotionally involved with my client's case but simply point to things in the evidence and 'submit' a meaning for them.
  
• I do not ask rhetorical questions.
  
• I stress that the defendant has given first hand evidence and the other side have given hearsay.
  
• I talk of express and implied contract terms
• I speak well-not perfectly, there are a few pauses and 'ems' but I do finish up with, 'Madam, unless I can assist you further, those are my submissions'.

It has taken less than 10 minutes-I believe I have covered the whole case and of all my attempts that day, it was by far the best.

There should be a chance now for the tutor to ask any questions she may have-she doesn't ask any. With barely a second's hesitation she awards the case to my client.
She then asks about costs-normally my client should have to pay since after all she was the one in the wrong since she didn't answer the original claim. I explain that normally she would have to pay but since her reasons for missing the claim was a good one (holidays are acceptable) then the costs should be shared ('in the case').

The judge agrees and I have finished.

We smile at each other and I leave.

Have I passed? I would like to think so but I really don't know. My confidence is shattered regarding advocacy but all I can say is that if I haven't passed this time-I will never pass. I can be no better than I was that Saturday morning.

But what a difference that smile made...
*
*
*
*
p.s I really did go to university with JK Rowling-but I very much doubt we met though
I lived my 3 years on one side of campus and her the other,
I did a science subject and she did an arts one.

But it's good to imagine, right?
I can't forgive her about Barry Cotter though....

A week of learning new stuff

I've just sent an email to a friend where I told him that I was into the last two months of the course-then it struck me...

I'm into the last two months of the course!!! Argggggghhhh!!


Sorry about that...


This year has shot by so fast-it began at an incredible speed since everything was new and I had to re-adjust my life accordingly.
Then when I had got into a routine, the compulsories filled up all of my time. They finished and I started to catch my breath and relax into the gentler pace of the electives-now these are almost half way through. Already we are looking at the exam time table with the aim of planning a revision timetable in mind.

There are 13 electives which all of the LPCers have to choose 3 from.
The college then have to squeeze exams for these into 8 days as well as the compulsory conduct exam.
What the college have tried to do is to make sure that if you have an exam in the morning you probably won't have one in the afternoon. So an elective for example in a subject where making-money is the key concept (PLCs and equity finance) is put on the same day as an elective where you are essentially working for the good of the underclass of society (e.g. employment). U
nfortunately, everyone has to do conduct and rather than put it on a day of its own it's been put on the exam day of the least popular subject:-

One so disliked only 7 full-time students chose it...

Ah, that would be Welfare, Benefits and Immigration

...bugger...

Fortunately apart from that minor glitch, my exam timetable looks pretty good. I have a free day between each exam (5 in 5 days wiped me out before) so I should be pretty rested and refreshed.
As an aside, I was in conversation with a student from my original tutor group on Friday, she was a bit concerned about her timetable-so we discussed it. I quickly realised that she was using the original one that had been superceeded by a changed version about...3 months ago...
I'm pleased we got that sorted out-BTW, her new timetable is a lot better!

I've got my routine established for these electives now and have a fair chance of getting the whole weekend off (but see later).

Being totally honest, I didn't do quite as much work over Easter as I had planned (For the record, I did do more than the vast majority of my class-mates though).
Towards the latter part of my holiday I had a few texts from one of my Immigration class about a group prep task that we had to get ready for Wednesday. These texts were to arrange a meeting on Monday so that the group could chat through what we had done and prepare the 'moot' (we were going to hold a mock Asylum hearing-our table was presenting the case of an illegal immigrant from Nepal and the other table was acting for the Home Office and trying to throw the young man out of the country).

Well, this classmate and I met up in the refectory on Monday-after small talk about the holiday and how we had done on the research, we got down to the nitty-gritty-where were the other two? It turned out that he hadn't contacted them-I assumed he had, he assumed I had.

Blox!

A fine pair of disorganised lawyers we'd make! Anyhow, I remembered that one of them was usually on campus on Mondays, so I went to find her. I was in luck, she promised to turn up in a few minutes, so I went back to the refectory and got my second bombshell...

My tablemate had researched the case from the point of view of the Home Office

...double blox!

The tutor had made a mistake originally by handing the wrong papers to us-he then emailed us to tell us of his mistake and to take the side of the papers we had been given-but this classmate hadn't checked his email for a couple of weeks.

Up and down the country, experienced barristers are quivering in fear...They'll never know what hit them...

We put our heads together and discussed the case. My two colleagues were of one mind.
We were screwed.

Only I could see that our case had a tiny bit of merit-so I set out to try to convince my teammates that we had a case-if I could convince them we might be able to convince the tutor. And fair enough, I did raise enough points so that we seemed to have a case to fight-one of our team even offered to make me a medal if we could get the young Nepalese asylum status.

Now that's what I call incentive!

She and I then agreed to meet in the computer room on Tuesday to get a finished version down in print.

Monday then went quite sedately with employment-as a class we have pretty much given up on getting our 'proper' tutor taking us. Yet again she was absent so we had to make do with temp-loyment.
She's taken us so many times now she is getting to know our names-this is not a good sign! The workshops remind me of days years ago when at secondary school, if a teacher couldn't make it, a substitute was bussed in at short notice-essentially just to keep order not actually teach anything.
Now to be fair, temp-loyment does try to teach us-but there is such an atmosphere of apathy around (which is doubled because she tries to be so damn enthusiastic-a knock on effect she probably hadn't forseen). This week we studied redundancy and it was OK (damned with faint praise again, huh?).

I'm now going to make statement that anyone who has ever been in a workshop with me will not believe. I did a presentation on our test redundancy subject.

I shall repeat that again so that those people who have fainted when they first read it can hit the floor again.

"I did a presentation-solo, just me, on my own, on my todd, seulement moi"

I had done pretty well, I remember doing a presentation in the first week because no one else on the table would do one. I hated it and it went badly-so I stopped. In fact I have gone on the record to say,

'I don't do presentations'

You can imagine how well that went down with my table

Now, we have killer statement number 2.

I enjoy doing presentations. To those people who have hit the floor again-a few seconds after their jaw-I have phoned an ambulance, it won't be long now...

This course is becoming one huge voyage of discovery...

To reduce the risk to health of my few remaining readers I shall move swiftly onto Tuesday. In advanced criminal we have moved onto a study of Crown Court trials. For anyone will little (or no) criminal knowledge-offences are broken down into 3 categories;

• Summary offences-these are heard at a magistrates' court and are less serious
• Indictable offences-these are heard only in the Crown Court-think wigs, robes and juries.
• Either-way offences-without boring the buttocks off you-these can go to either court but are usually heard in the magistrates'.
  

We started off the course with Case study 1, looking at various either-way drug offences-just to prove me wrong these are going to Crown.

D'oh

Case study 2 is looking at rape. Obviously this is a very contentious offence which essentially hinges on a few things;

• Did the physical act take place?
• Were both parties consenting?
• If not, did the partner of the party who wasn't consenting have a reasonable belief that they weren't?
  

Did everyone follow that? There'll be a test later. Anyone who fails has to fill the internet with ink.

Our workshop group is about 60% female-and my table is all female (apart from me obviously) so I expected a rough ride (sorry if that came out wrong).
In fact, the only one on the table arguing for the women's point of view was me! All 3 of the gels were quite happy to say things like, 'well she was asking for it', 'you can't trust girls like that', 'I know the sort'.

Say that again?-feminism is not dead but it ain't half sick...

This case hinges purely on consent-both parties admit the act took place. There was a party, she wasn't well-he said, 'go up to my room' and lie down there-I'll check on you in a while'. She goes up, lies down.
He arrives shortly and **cough** intimacy takes place. That night she tells her friends that he raped her. He is arrested and is now looking at a full trial with wigs, gowns and a jury.

So, did she consent or not?
He says that they had done a similar thing the week before at another party.
Is this true? (interestingly she omitted to mention this in her statement)
Did it happen?
Will we ever know?

Criminal is just sooooo sordid-I love it! It's like studying a mix of Frost, Kavanagh and Cracker. I can now watch TV and pretend I'm studying!

That afternoon, I met my Immigration colleague in the computer room and we committed out case to paper-damn it looks good! I can feel the cleansing power of British justice about to wipe our client's immigration record spotlessly clean!

The only teensy problem is that I kept referring to his country as Tibet (close but no yak-hair cigar)

OK, the big day has arrived. The wholesome Immigration lawyers sitting one side of the tribunal room (hurrah, applause) and the evil, venomous Home Office lickspittles toadying away on the other side of the room (boos, catcalls).
We were in luck, the Home Office side had barely done any work on researching their case and the tutor had to keep intervening to give them a chance (the poor fools)

Unfortunately, all of our good work turned to mush in our hands. The case was effectively unwinnable. There were potentially 3 groups who could do our client harm if he were to be returned to Nepal. Individually, they were all faint possibilities but when combined-who knows?
Alas, the adjuducator (the tutor) decided that the young lad had to be returned to Nepal.

Shame.

The good news is that I never referred to Tibet once (though this may have had something to do with the word 'Nepal' being written in size 200 font on a sheet of A4 in front of me)

We then studied a further case-we assumed that this poor student was in fact a guerilla leader of the Maoist faction who had personally participated in murder, terrorism and torture against the legitimate authorities in Nepal. When we examined his case, we discovered the following.
As a self-confessed torturer;

• He could not be granted asylum (hurrah)
• He could not get Humanitarian Protection (hurrah)

but since his life would definitely be in danger if he were sent back, the legal responsibilities of the UK insist that he will receive limited leave for 6 months. This would be reviewed at the end of the period and if nothing had changed for the better he would get another 6 months.

So let's get this right,

1. An honest hard working student sent right back
   
2. A torturor and mass murderer gets to stay...some days I can be so proud to be British...

That was the last thing we do for immigration-the large group lecture afterwards was our first covering benefits. We (so far) have looked at;

• Industrial disablement benefit
• Disability living allowance
• Carer's allowance and
• Child benefit
  

And already my head is spinning-we have so many more to do. Although we have been told that there are some fiendish calculations coming up soon-I dearly hope so, that's one of my strong points!

The other news at the end of the week was the announcement that the papers for the retake of my advocacy are ready. So, I made a special trip into college to pick them up.

The good thing is that I have no physical opponent (I guess the College realise that two nervous people would only make each other worse after all), so I just have to do is pitch my client's case to the judge.

The downside is that the case is weak-on top of that I have to retake it next Saturday. This doesn't give me a lot of time. When I made my first attempt, I had the papers for over three weeks and had a few days off before the exam itself. This time I have to prep for next weeks workshops on top of prepping for the assessment but hey, let's get it out of the way!

So, come Monday-I shall have to take my toys to school and lock them away.

I shall have to have my suit dry-cleaned too. A friend told me that clothes are meant to bend.

Fancy that!

You learn something new everyday.

p.s. I wrote this a little earlier than usual and it was only as I began to ponder about life in general and the state of my eternal soul in particular that I remembered another couple of events that made a huge impression on me this week.

Firstly was the appearance of a young lady who had been on my table for half my workshops in the compulsories but who had not made an appearance during the electives.
Well, blow me down wiv a fevver-she only went and turned up aht of the blue (I have a tendency to get a bit mockney late at night-sorry).
She confessed that so far she had only been to 2 workshops-the employment one we met at and one other.
This does not bode well-in fact in general boding terms it looks terminal. I've done all I can so far-I've forwarded my notes for the employment classes she's missed-but unfortunately we have no other shared courses-so she's on her own. Still, nice to see her again.

And secondly, I went out on Tuesday to celebrate the birthday of a friend from the course. I'm not sure if I've noted it elsewhere but this year, for the first time for about 20 years I will have to do work on my birthday-which is rapidly approaching. I've always been in the habit of taking that day as holiday-however this time around I've got a workshop and a lecture so there's no getting out of it I'm afraid (though this puts me in a better position than another friend who has an exam on her actual birthday!)

Anyhow, the great thing was that there was a really good turn out-all the more surprising since it was a school night (and there was footie on the TV), so I want to take a little time to say 'thank you' to her for inviting me out for drinkies. I'd also like to say a general 'thank you' to her for being a good friend and confidant and for persuading me that young people today are still bright and intelligent, witty and fun.
And so to break the habit that I've got into since the first entry-I'll name her and say a heart-felt,

'Thank you Claire, you are one of the people that I'll definitely miss at the end of all this'.

Ooh, I'm getting a bit misty eyed-must be the hay-fever. I'd better go and lie down.

Looking back, looking forward (but stuck in the present)

Well, that's me on my hols then. (Proper hols this time not that 'ought to be doing some work really-that's why we've given you the time off' thing).

Officially we have no work to hand in the week we go back either...
...but unofficially that's a different mattter (more on that later).

The week started well with me bumping into a couple of my tutor group friends and we had a discussion on how things were going and how we yearned for the 'old times'. It was interesting to note that they were feeling a bit uninspired by their electives as well. We compared experiences and it does seem that there is a mood amongst th students (and the tutors) of the 'worst is over, let's drift towards the final exams shall we?'.

One of the problems is that you are flung together with new classmates-and these also vary from class to class. This means that you don't get a chance to gradually get to know people-it's all rather 'wham baam could you repeat that Ma'am?' So, what generally happens is that those people who had their compulsories together tend to congregate in small cliques in their electives.

Due to the short amount of time that you spend together and the amount of ground that has to be covered in the workshops, no one seems to make much effort to get to learn about their co-students (and I must plead 'guilty as the rest' to this as well). It's almost as if people realise that it'll be over so soon and then we'll be split up again-so what's the point?

Anyhow. The big question on everyones' lips. Would we get to meet out proper employment tutor?

NO.

Well that was easy. We had the woman from week 1 again. It looks like she she will our permanent temporary employment tutor.

I shall call her the temp-loyment tutor.

She tried her best, bless her but it was like a meeting of apathetics anonymous (pedantic point-a true meeting of apathetics anonymous would have no members present but you get the idea). This week we covered unfair dismissal (that's twice in about 3 months-are the College trying to give us a hint?).

As far as workshops go it was fine. The one really bright spot for me was a discussion that we had on our table very early on. We had been given documents that explained out client's case-a woman who was so ill-treated at work that she gave in and resigned. She was then taking a case before the tribunal claiming that this ill-treatment was the cause of her resignation and claiming damages (money) for her loss. We had to read over the papers and discuss them in our group before deciding how strong her case was.

My argument was simply that since the case balanced on 'did she go or was she pushed', we had to know whether she had resigned or been 'constructively dismissed'. If she resigns she gets nothing.
On the evidence that we had (which was only the woman's own testimony) you could put forward a strong case. That was not good enough for me, so I decided to sit on the fence and say 'it depends'. The rest of my table (for some reason unknown to me) decided that the evidence of mistreatment was so strong that they would have urged her to push ahead with her claim.

But as all the keen readers of this column know, every case has two sides.

During the session we were presented with her employers version of events-and boy was there some frantic backpeddling going on! As you might guess, the two accounts didn't quite tally together-and her rock solid case began to crumble before our eyes. Of course it would have been totally unthinkable for me to have behaved in a superior or smug way.

"..when you've seen as much of life as I have you realise that..." No, I did not say those words or anything like them.

(Though it's not such a major sin to think them, right?)

In preparation for criminal I had spent a lot of time on writing up the details of the case that we are working our way through. We had been told that this was to be handed in and since I was keen to make a good impression I had put a lot more time into it than I had for previous weeks prep. I also (as I'm sure you'll remember) spent a lot of time on the 'Critical Incidence Tests' ready to be discussed in class.

So, imagine the joy on my face when I arrived for criminal and found out;

1. The tutor had decided that the handing in was now optional,
2. The CITs had been optional.
   

Hmm, 8 hours of my life I won't get back....

Even better, one of the 2 crim tutors had phoned in sick so our tutor decided that he would run one giant workshop of 40 people. Rather than amend things he just decided to proceed as normal on a grander scale.

This was not a success.

Rather than the intimate little rooms we are used to with it's low ceiling and excellent acoustics we had the workshop in an aircraft-hanger of a room. Conversation at the table was difficult at best and when we had to present to the rest of the class, it was decided that semaphore may have been more appropriate than speech.
As part of these presentations, 'bullet points' are put up on whiteboards-one of the girls on my table couldn't read the writing half way down the room-let alone at the far end.
This 'adapt the small to the large' idea seems to have been a theme this week, but more later.

The large group lecture that followed ran along the same lines as previous ones. We seem to have no substantial topics for the lectures so they are made out of 2 or more bits that seem put together for chronological reasons.
I wouldn't say the subject was dull since that would be akin to describing your wife/girlfriend or partner as ugly (remember that no one has an ugly wife, maybe an ugly ex-wife...) I love criminal, I really do but this course is trying it's hardest to make me unfaithful.


Luckily, that will never be with 'welfare and immigration'. The subject continues to confound and confuse me. My bugbear of the week is that 'Tigger' has his own particular way of doing things and because he will be the only one to mark the exams, we are 'recommended' that we follow his way.
Only problem is, I don't like his way. If a question has 4 parts a) to d) then every fibre of my being will try to answer those in order as fully and comprehensively as possible.
(The College love to give marks for 'showing all the working'-so rather than just state for example "this sale of land by a director of the company to the company he works for is a 'substantial property transaction' ", we are expected to show which Act of Parliament makes it so and how the parties concerned 'tick every box' of the statute.
If you don't do it, you drop marks. Tigger's method involves taking those parts a) to d) and doing just one long answer that covers all of them (you hope).

I really couldn't say why I don't like it-it just seems chaotic and against all the things I've ever been taught (oh god, I am old-its official). And we all know where this sort of chaotic, random behaviour ends up. That's right...

ANARCHY!!!!

The large group that followed covered asylum/refugees and deportation/administrative removal. Tigger carried on his chaotic thought processes theme by taking the printed handout that had 7 numbered sections and starting with number 4, then went to 2 (with a bit of 5) then to 6, back to 1, ignored 7 totally and finished up with 3 and the rest of 5.

In truth, it was actually very interesting-we looked at the definition of a refugee under international law and how this had been interpreted into UK law. (Though I had to squirm slightly with the tutor's description of the degree of severity that an act needed to be before it rated as 'persecution' as its 'level of nastiness'-this seemed a bit childish really)

The class ended with us being given a group assignment for the Easter break. We were given the background details of a refugee from Tibet. Half of us have to act for the refugee as his immigration lawyers to try to get him to stay in the country. The other half must act for the Home Office and try to get him 'administratively removed'. I was delighted to be able to act for the Home Office (the bad guys get all the good lines..) but was slightly disgruntled when Tigger emailed us all on Friday to say that he had handed the wrong roles to the groups and to prepare the other side (and me with my white hat in the wash too).

As part of this we have to print off about 70 pages of A4 from the internet-I chose to do it from College before I walked home-no fool I!

It looks like consolidation takes about 2 hours for each college class-so I'm reckoning on about 10 hours a week for this. I did my consol over Thurday and Friday. I wanted to get it done then since I had a huge treat lined up for Saturday.

I got to ride on the Tube!!!

Yep, up to the 'smoke' again-this time to take part in an induction day for the Free Representation Unit (FRU). The idea is that when certain individuals have legal problems they consult an approved legal source (the CAB, Law Centre or their Union if they still have one at work). If the legal source feel that they have a legitimate case then they pass it on to FRU who appoint one of their case workers to it.

FRU deal with employment claims (usually dismissal or withholding wages) and benefit claims. This particular induction course was for employment (I will try to do the benefit one when it's next on).
The day was held at City University in Islington so I got a chance to play Tube Monopoly-passing through (among others) Tottenham Court Road, Euston before alighting at the Angel. I did my usual trick of going in 100% the wrong direction when I left the tube station. But I managed to re-orientate myself by finding a street that matched my almost illegible map and made it in good time.

The first shock I had was the size of the day. I had expected a cosy little group of 20-30.
Nope there were 300 of us in a huuuuuuge lecture theatre! The day itself was a real treat. On the whole the speakers were excellent-both informative and entertaining and I left with a feeling of a day well spent.

The only downers were one particular speaker who tried to involve us in a group exercise-she did confess that she had previously only run it for a group of about 12 but 'I imagine it will be the same'. Keen witted readers will note a previous example from this week.

IT DOESN'T WORK GUYS-SO STOP DOING IT!!

and true to the prediction it was a fiasco. The idea was to examine a statement of a witness and try to piece together a list of documents that were mentioned or could be inferred from the wording of the statement. This may work superbly with 12 people but with 300, 30 of which had their hands up at any one time and were giving new suggestions or arguing points it was a chaotic mess.

**thinks bubble, I wonder if she teaches immigration law in her spare time...?**

The other sad thing is that numbers dropped dramatically during the day. People were still arriving well into the 2nd hour of the day (it was scheduled from 10am to 4pm). By the afternoon, some 40% seemed to have left early.

The next stage involves reading 2 cases on their web-site and sending two 'opinions' to the caseworker who was acting a Master of Ceremonies for the day. He then marks them and sends a message to the sender saying whether they passed or failed. He reckons about 1/3 fail. If you pass then the FRU will send details of a case (usually unfair dismissal) for you to research and then to represent at a real tribunal (a representative at a tribunal doesn't need to be a qualified solicitor-unlike for a magistrates/county court). Interestingly, very few people send any opinions in at all. Of those that did, FRU reckon the longest took 3 years to be returned and the quickest was 18 hours. (both were passes)

During the course of the day we had lectures on the basics of unfair dismissal, the conditions needed and the possible remedies (oh god, that's 3 times in 3 months-I'm definitely getting the message now!)

One of the highlights of the day for me was chatting to the young lady who sat next to me. Originally from Malaysia and now settled in the UK she is studying for her BVC (barristers qualification) at the College of Law's biggest rival in London. Surprisingly since we are of different sexes/ages/continents and most importantly legal orientations we hit it off brilliantly. It was lovely to chat and compare courses, to talk about the similarities and differences of our choices. She has promised that if she's sitting in judgment over one of my cases in about 20 years she'll decide in my favour-and you can't get much better than that!

As for when I'll do the opinions-it looks like the second week of the holiday is most likely. I'm not a 100% sure I want to do the actual FRU work-it seems that we'll be expected to travel up to London a fair bit and money is now starting to get a bit tight. But I do want to do the theoretical side-just to see if I'm up to it (and of course the revision value-although I am a tad weary of unfair dismissal at present...)

During that time I'll have to make a stab at that Tibetan immigration thing too.

Ho hum. So much for that holiday...

And now, the bit you've all been waiting for!
The answer to the CIT posted last week.

Fanfare of trumpets...
Drum roll...

Response-there are two main issues here.
Firstly, just because the custody sergeant tells you that all your client wants is a quick bit of telephone advice, you must not assume that is all you need to do.
Secondly, before you give your client any advice you need to get some information from the custody officer-so you should cover;

• Thank the officer for calling you
• Tell the officer that before you speak to the client you first need to obtain informtion from the officer
• Then cover; client's full details, arrest time and place, detention time, reasons for detention, details of arresting officer and investigating officer, custody record number, client's condition and any issue of vulnerability, whether any significant statements (confessions) were made, details of the incident for which the client was arrested and whether anyone else was arrested for the incident.
• Thank the officer for this information and then ask to speak to the client in private.
  

That's all there is to it-just remember you have 30 seconds of thinking time...

And now the bit you've really been waiting for;

The End