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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
Sam Townend KC explains the Bar Council’s efforts towards ensuring a bright future for the profession
Giovanni D’Avola explores the issue of over-citation of unreported cases and the ‘added value’ elements of a law report
Louise Crush explores the key points and opportunities for tax efficiency
Westgate Wealth Management Ltd is a Partner Practice of FTSE 100 company St. James’s Place – one of the top UK Wealth Management firms. We offer a holistic service of distinct quality, integrity, and excellence with the aim to build a professional and valuable relationship with our clients, helping to provide them with security now, prosperity in the future and the highest standard of service in all of our dealings.
Is now the time to review your financial position, having reached a career milestone? asks Louise Crush
If you were to host a dinner party with 10 guests, and you asked them to explain what financial planning is and how it differs to financial advice, you’d receive 10 different answers. The variety of answers highlights the ongoing need to clarify and promote the value of financial planning.
Most of us like to think we would risk our career in order to meet our ethical obligations, so why have so many lawyers failed to hold the line? asks Flora Page
If your current practice environment is bringing you down, seek a new one. However daunting the change, it will be worth it, says Anon Barrister
Creating advocacy opportunities for juniors is now the expectation but not always easy to put into effect. Tom Mitcheson KC distils developing best practice from the Patents Court initiative already bearing fruit
Sam Townend KC explains the Bar Council’s efforts towards ensuring a bright future for the profession
The long-running fee-paid judicial pensions saga continues. The current cut-off date for giving notice of election to join FPJPS is 31 March 2024, and that date now gives rise to a serious problem, warns HH John Platt