Benchmark revisited part 4

Whilst it is obviously gratifying to become a QC, most of the time you don't consciously think about it. Usually other people think about it more than you do.

I was once in a robing room in a particular court some years ago. This was a year or so after I had taken silk. Someone came in who was not supposed to be in the barristers' robing room (where you could also get lunch). (Things have changed now because given the changes in the rules about who can be an advocate in the High Court or the Crown Court, many if not most of those present these days are solicitor advocates rather than barristers. In the past this was not so, solicitors had their own lounge, and the rule was that barristers did not bring their instructing solicitors into the robing room. Part of the reason for that was that solicitors had their own room, but the principal one was that barristers in the robing room felt able to talk freely in a way they would not if solicitors were present. These were people whose work the barristers were competing for and so their presence would tend to make the tone and subject matter of conversation more serious and less jocular than would otherwise be the case. No one would be telling stories about stupid things that they or their client or their instructing solicitor or their clerk had done.). A senior barrister approached me and said it fell to me as the senior person present to do something about it and ask the solicitor to leave. I was astounded because I did not understand why someone who was 15 or 20 years senior to me and older than me thought that I was senior to him. He must have thought I was stupid because I actually asked him why he thought I was senior to him and he replied "Because you're a silk, obviously". I have to say that thought had never occurred to me for a moment. By the time this conversation had finished the solicitor had left of his own accord in any event.

One of the more amusing aspects of becoming a QC was the way that certain people who studiously ignored you before you became a QC would start to say hello and chat to you like an old friend or long lost relative once you became one. I have never been able to understand people like that. Do they seriously think that you are going to forget that they were not interested in you before you obtained your enhanced status? Or do they think that you are so obsessed with your new status that you might take umbrage if they continued to ignore you? They remind me of the people who, when I was a teenager, suddenly noticed my existence when I won an open scholarship to Cambridge. Do such people think you are completely stupid? (I had better say nothing about whether they are right in my case!).

In a more acceptable vein of being noticed you get invited to various legal functions you would not otherwise have been invited to. That is not a question of being previously ignored, it is simply a question of the numbers game. There is always a limit on how many people can be invited, and so as a silk you tend to get priority. As with invitations generally, this is a mixed blessing. Some are very much worth having, and some are not worth having at all. The problem is it is not necessarily clear in advance which event will prove to be a lot of fun, and which will prove to be deadly dull.