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.
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;
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...
So, imagine the joy on my face when I arrived for criminal and found out;
- The tutor had decided that the handing in was now optional,
- The CITs had been optional.
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.
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.
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...
**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.
The answer to the CIT posted last week.
Fanfare of trumpets...
Drum roll...
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;
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.
And now the bit you've really been waiting for;
The Endposted by Paul Salmon at
6:48 pm
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