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.