What Are You Currently Reading?

[Karl]

Unfortunately, big chunks of law.

That's something I've always wondered: law students have to read a lot of law while going through law school. And when they pass their bar exam and can practice the stuff, they have to read a whole lot of material for each case - in addition, of course, to keeping themselves up to date on an evolving legal system. Do lawyers ever get time to read anything not related to work?

[GUT]

That's something I've always wondered: law students have to read a lot of law while going through law school. And when they pass their bar exam and can practice the stuff, they have to read a whole lot of material for each case - in addition, of course, to keeping themselves up to date on an evolving legal system. Do lawyers ever get time to read anything not related to work?

Well I know I do. Probably no as much as I’d like too and always seem to have a pile I Need to get too.

But usually escapism type stuff, James Patterson is great because of his very short chapters.

Currently I’m reading a brief for a 10 day family law trial, there are four lever arch folders of affidavits and expert reports along with 3 boxes of subpoena material (about 12 hours a day) a submission in relation to proposed changes to the Australian Family Law System (about 120 pages basically editing it) (6-8 hours a day on the weekend) and have a Vince Flynn “Mitch Rapp” novel that I try to grab 1/4 hour here and there just to de stress. And then toss in keeping up with what’s happening here and on a cruise site I belong to.

And then there are the quiet times when you’ve got a couple of free days when you might devour a book a day, you’ve become accustomed to reading fairly fast so chew through most novels.

I think every Barrister I know enjoys some outside reading.

[Robert]

GUT, suppose you take up a case and it drags on for years. Are you tied to it all the way to the finish, or can you hand it over to some other lawyer for a while?

[Karl]

And then there are the quiet times when you’ve got a couple of free days when you might devour a book a day, you’ve become accustomed to reading fairly fast so chew through most novels.

Well, I envy you. My university days killed my ability to read fiction. When it comes to academic literature, I can read fast - and absorb it. With fiction, however, I'm a dreadfully slow reader. I can't seem to enjoy it unless I read it at the same speed as an audio book, because only then can I commit every detail to memory. My brain is tuned in to academic literature, and seems to find fiction abrasive, in a way. And as a result, I find I can read Mallory's Morte d'Arthur just as quickly in the original spelling as with the modernised spelling. "Than seyde Sir Bors de Ganys, I wyste never Cornysh knyght of so grete a valure nor so valyaunte as that knyght of that beryth the trappours enbrowdred with crownys."

[Magpie]

I'm currently working my way through "The Carry On Companion" I'm up to Carry On Constable.

[GUT]

GUT, suppose you take up a case and it drags on for years. Are you tied to it all the way to the finish, or can you hand it over to some other lawyer for a while?

Sometimes you have to hand it over but the preference is to stay with it (that’s as a barrister where you’ll of be I it for the actual hearing it’s hard to take over a matter that is part heard) for a solicitor it’s a bit easier to hand it over as their role tends to be a bit more of a one step at a time type thing, but even then it is better to stay in it.

In any matter it’s not unusual for a different lawyer to appear in Court at different stages eg, the case I insisted yesterday was a family law hearing, even before the court for about three years since it was originally started along the way...

Numerous mentions, probably 20+ one or two solicitors (from the one firm) did all, or most of those I think once or twice they may have got someone from another firm to take care of it. These are procedural steps, ie setting dates for various things, minor issues.

There was an interim hearing, basically done on the papers, no cross examination or oral evidence, judge reads the affidavits lawyers make submissions why the judge should do what their client wants. I did it.

There was at least one contravention, an allegation that someone hadn’t complied with prior orders, I was in another hearing so another Barrister took that hearing on.

It was listed for hearing, but couldn’t go on for various reason, I was in it, along with two other barristers, one for the other parent, one for the child. That was back in February.

This week we got to final hearing, I was again in it, and whilst there were still two other Barristers it wasn’t the same two as February as they were “jammed” (one had another hearing listed the same days, the other had retired).

I hope that helps explain it a little.

[GUT]

Likewise in a Criminal matter.

Someone may appear on a bail application, someone else on an application to do with psychiatric assessment and someone else on the trial and occasionally yet another person on sentencing, then yet a different person on an appeal.

And the same applies to civil cases.

Also sometimes, rarely, one person might be engaged to deal with just one witness, because they are considered an expert in a very narrow area, a great example is an appeal I have coming up, the other side has briefed a prominent QC who’s expertise is in constitution law and another who is an expert in Family Law, as their version of the appeal covers both issues.

[Pcdunn]

Currently reading "I Will Find You: Solving Killer Cases from My Life Fighting Crime" by Detective Lt. Joe Kenda -- a retired Colorado Springs cop now seen on the ID channel show "Homicide Hunter". He is a very personable gentleman who tells his cases with dry wit, and assures us that it is not like on the TV dramas.

Just finished "Heart Berries, A Memoir" by Theresa Mailhot, a First Nations woman who has struggled with poverty and bipolar depression. Despite the heavy content, her writing is amazingly lyrical. The author is coming to our campus next week to speak. Should be interesting.

[Robert]

Thanks GUT. That's a terrific amount of info you have to keep re-familiarising yourself with over a long period of time.

Bit like a Lechmere thread.

[Robert]

I'm currently working my way through "The Carry On Companion" I'm up to Carry On Constable.

One of the best in the series.

[barnflatwyngarde]

I'm reading the new Ben MacIntyre book " The Spy And The Traitor", detailing the life and career of the Russian double agent Oleg Gordievsky.
It's a great read, I can highly recommend it

Also rereading "Letter To A Christian Nation" by Sam Harris.
It's a succinct and devastating put down of religion, his anger at the absurdities of organised religion shines on every page.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’m reading London: A Biography by Peter Ackroyd which is a risk for me. It’s a book that I really want to read but it’s 750+ pages long and I always have books on order (usually Doyle/Holmes related) and so when they arrive I’m tempted to put the longer book to one side. This can mean that I never get back to it. I hope this doesn’t happen.

Sam Harris’s book is great Barn I’ve also got The End Of Faith and I’m hoping to get Islam And The Future.

[c.d.]

I am currently reading "Blood and Thunder" by Hampton Sides. It is about the scout Kit Carson and the conquest of the American West in the 1840s and 1850s. Very interesting.

c.d.

[Scott Nelson]

I'm halfway through Dick's Exegesis now. It's a very slow undertaking - one or two pages at a time.

I think I've come to agree with him that time doesn't really exist at all in the sense that we have understood it.

[Bridewell]

Christopher Lee's (slightly) abridged version of Churchill's "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples".