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David Langwallner tends to your literary health: a personal prescription, with some aphoristic and aesthetic comment
We are all in varying degrees of lockdown, deeply worried about the sustainability and survivability of the profession and, more personally, of our good selves and our loved ones. In this crisis, we also worry about how to function in difficult if not incomprehensible times without abandoning our sense of professionalism and integrity. How to adapt and survive and provide an ethical and competent service remotely? Almost a contradiction in terms.
Let us not focus here on the awful particular and particulars to come. Our esteemed Chair with her customary sense of balance and rectitude has issued strong statements and positive suggestions about money, support, conduct of hearings, and health mental and otherwise.
Putting fawning aside, my mission here is to support this agenda in a different way. Japanese guidebooks to wisdom and simplicity and meditation help, as do turmeric and chili recipes. I have recently recommended to Chambers the splendid book Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking, and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way. You cannot cut wood in overcrowded conurbations and, with decamping like Wittgenstein to a wood on pain of potential arrest, how best to cope?
With restrictions and emergencies to come I suggest we read some books and texts, to use a fashionable vernacular. To supplement the advice of the Bar Elders this reading list for literary health for lawyers contains a personal selection of the popular and grand, serious and light. Films and music too.
The List
And a couple of bonus music tracks – the always-relaxing Glenn Gould Plays Bach or Bob Dylan’s Love Minus Zero.
Perhaps we could start a shared cultural competition to keep us occupied.
We are all in varying degrees of lockdown, deeply worried about the sustainability and survivability of the profession and, more personally, of our good selves and our loved ones. In this crisis, we also worry about how to function in difficult if not incomprehensible times without abandoning our sense of professionalism and integrity. How to adapt and survive and provide an ethical and competent service remotely? Almost a contradiction in terms.
Let us not focus here on the awful particular and particulars to come. Our esteemed Chair with her customary sense of balance and rectitude has issued strong statements and positive suggestions about money, support, conduct of hearings, and health mental and otherwise.
Putting fawning aside, my mission here is to support this agenda in a different way. Japanese guidebooks to wisdom and simplicity and meditation help, as do turmeric and chili recipes. I have recently recommended to Chambers the splendid book Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking, and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way. You cannot cut wood in overcrowded conurbations and, with decamping like Wittgenstein to a wood on pain of potential arrest, how best to cope?
With restrictions and emergencies to come I suggest we read some books and texts, to use a fashionable vernacular. To supplement the advice of the Bar Elders this reading list for literary health for lawyers contains a personal selection of the popular and grand, serious and light. Films and music too.
The List
And a couple of bonus music tracks – the always-relaxing Glenn Gould Plays Bach or Bob Dylan’s Love Minus Zero.
Perhaps we could start a shared cultural competition to keep us occupied.
David Langwallner tends to your literary health: a personal prescription, with some aphoristic and aesthetic comment
Our call for sufficient resources for the justice system and for the Bar to scrutinise the BSB’s latest consultation
Marie Law, Head of Toxicology at AlphaBiolabs, discusses alcohol testing for the Family Court
Louise Crush of Westgate Wealth explains how to make sure you are investing suitably, and in your long-term interests
In conversation with Matthew Bland, Lincoln’s Inn Library
Millicent Wild of 5 Essex Chambers describes her pupillage experience
Louise Crush of Westgate Wealth explores some key steps to take when starting out as a barrister in order to secure your financial future
From a traumatic formative education to exceptional criminal silk – Laurie-Anne Power KC talks about her path to the Bar, pursuit of equality and speaking out against discrimination (not just during Black History Month)
James Onalaja concludes his two-part opinion series
Expectations, experiences and survival tips – some of the things I wished I had known (or applied) when I was starting pupillage. By Chelsea Brooke-Ward
If you are in/about to start pupillage, you will soon be facing the pupillage stage assessment in professional ethics. Jane Hutton and Patrick Ryan outline exam format and tactics
In a two-part opinion series, James Onalaja considers the International Criminal Court Prosecutor’s requests for arrest warrants in the controversial Israel-Palestine situation