Snow fun: it's no fun

Before I started work as a barrister I used to love the snow. Even better than when I was at school was when I was at university. Then if there was snow during the Christmas break it was just an added aspect of the never-ending Christmas/New Year party which always carried on for about three weeks.

It's no fun once you have to start getting to court. In a sense this merely reflects the problem everyone that has a job has, that when this country inevitably collapses at the first sign of any weather which is marginally different from the norm, getting to and from work is an absolute nightmare. However it has an added frisson when you are in court. If there is going to be a trial for example if you do not turn up then the trial cannot take place. Therefore you end up having to make insane efforts to get there.

This is also something which hits very junior members hardest. Nowadays it is very rare for me to be anywhere other than in one of the main court centres. If I'm doing a case in London my flat is about five minutes walk from the Royal Courts of Justice so it would probably take a blizzard to stop me getting there (although of course that doesn't mean your case will go ahead if no one else can get there). Cases elsewhere in the main court centres such as Manchester are also usually relatively easy to get to.

However when you start off at the Bar you are sent to any number of far-flung magistrates courts and county courts and getting to them can be problematical. I remember as a junior barrister receiving a brief at six o'clock one evening in the depths of a very snowy winter, requiring me to undertake a journey the next morning which given the snow was going to involve me setting off at about 4:30 AM, and noting to my complete bewilderment that the name of one of the three partners of the firm instructing me was, I kid you not, "Snowball".

As a very junior barrister I was once given a case in the far north just before Christmas in a very cold and snowy winter. The case was on a Monday and I decided that the only safe thing was to travel up the day before and stay in a hotel. Unfortunately my car broke down on the way there, and I was left waiting to be rescued by the emergency services. Once they had fixed my car and I was on my way I arrived quite late but felt that the expense of staying overnight was worth it because I knew I would manage to do the trial following day. (As you can well imagine, recently qualified barristers are usually completely strapped for cash, because there is a time lag between doing the case and receiving the money, and also because you are usually substantially in debt before you even get started as a result of the costs of qualifying). For the junior barrister, the expenses of doing a case can be a real burden because you are incurring the expense but not receiving the fee.

Imagine my horror when the next day the case ended up being adjourned. In consequence that meant I only received an adjournment fee. (Just so you realise we are not talking mega-money, the fee for actually doing the case was £75, but for an adjournment it was £35). When I worked out the sums for the cost of hotel and a meal and costs of the journey, I had spent about a day in order to realise the princely sum of about £1.75. However given the delay in receipt of the fee as against incurring expenses, and given that in those days interest rates for unsecured borrowing were about 15%, by the time you had factored interest into account I think I made a loss on the trip. No fun indeed.

If you're awake at about 6 AM this week and look out at snow falling, think of the junior barristers across the country who are trying to battle their way to distant courts for tiny fees. If you are a wannabe barrister, then unless you go straight into commercial work (and even then you can still be sent to all sorts of County Courts), remember that, subject to the weather, you are likely one day to be one of them.