The best of health part 1

One thing that you will tend to find is that as a whole barristers have very few days off work.

There are of course practical reasons for this. Unless you are literally at "death's door" it is very difficult to get a replacement at the last moment. Also since barristers generally do not get paid except for work done, and do not receive sick pay, there is never a financial incentive to pull a "sickie". (While some barristers will have sick pay insurance, usually this does not kick in unless you have been off work for a considerable period of time, and sometimes there are also restrictive definitions regarding what constitutes sickness meaning inability to work, so that purely inability to go to court might not count if you are regarded as capable of holding a dictaphone and dictating papers). There is probably little doubt that self-employed people who receive no money for failing to turn up routinely ignore minor ailments in a way that employed people consistently fail to do.

However even beyond any financial incentive for the self-employed, barristers have a tendency to turn up for work, or want to turn up for work, almost regardless. This arises from a number of different causes. The first is professional commitment to the cause. Whilst this type of approach is not limited in its effect to groups such as lawyers, or indeed the self-employed (hospital doctors?) it is an important thing which drives people on. When someone is expecting you to turn up and act on their behalf it is very difficult to accept that you will not.

Adrenaline almost certainly has a lot to do with it. Lots of studies have shown the operation of adrenaline in terms of diminishing pain for example (soldiers "up" for battle can suffer appalling injuries without reacting or feeling the pain in the way you would expect). There is no doubt that barristers find that their systems "rev up" before a court hearing. That will probably help drive through situations which otherwise they might find totally debilitating.

I have recently been reminded of this as a result of an accident which occurred on Saturday evening. Having been out for a pleasant dinner with my two teenage children, the return home was marred somewhat by my slipping over a box of documents whilst holding a wine glass. Unfortunately it was a cut crystal wine glass, which meant that when it broke as I fell on it, instead of disintegrating when the base separated from the stem it turned into a glass dagger which stabbed and gouged its way across the palm of my right (dominant) hand, leading to spectacular and continuing torrents of blood. Since this happened on a Saturday evening, shortly after 11 p.m., it meant that I arrived in casualty in central London just in time for the Saturday night scrum. X-rays, probing with plastic tweezers and then cleaning and stitching, together with the journey back from hospital (you try flagging down a taxi when bandaged and covered in blood) method I did not get back until just before 6 a.m. which is hardly ideal when you are due at Chapel in the morning before Benchers Sunday lunch. Even less ideal when you have to shave with your left hand and succeed in causing several cuts before going out.

Was there a question of that interfering with this week's hearings? There was absolutely no chance of that, absolutely no way it would happen. I struggle to think of any barrister who would let an injury such as this get in the way of their court appearances. At the same time, it is fairly clear that in most occupations this would be the green light to a few days off. However, even when the situation is much more serious than this, despite illness you will find that barristers will still appear in court. We will look at more instances next week.