William Byfield's Secret E-Diary

A minute’s silence for the passing of the legal aid sytem

June 10, 2013: “Nothing’s sacred to those devils.” Batman (Adam West)

Short of bumping into the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse on the way to the Bailey, things could not feel more eschatological. Arriving, I spotted what looked like a huge number of nicotine-addicted barristers congregating on the pavement outside the entrance. Hetty Briar-Pitt, my junior, barred my entry and forced me, like a shy horse, into their ranks. It dawned on me then that this was, in fact, a minute’s silence for the passing of the legal aid system.

Prospective jury members had better make their excuses good if they want to wriggle out of performing their time-honoured duty

April 8, 2013: Jury: A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him – Henry Louis Mencken

Last week, the jury was selected in the sensational trial of Jason Grimble and Moses Lane for the alleged murder of the disliked Claude Allerick, formerly one of Her Majesty’s (Circuit) Judges and sometime member of Gutteridge Chambers. A last-minute reprieve had come when our previously assigned judge finally read at night in bed one page too many of the voluminous Criminal Procedure Rules and slipped a disc. Fate then gave us the lovely Jonathan Hay to try our case and the deceptively relaxed George White QC, of Treasury Counsel, to prosecute us.

A much anticipated day in court ends before it even gets started

February 8 2013: “‘Twas a rough night!” - Macbeth

It always is a rough night prior to the first day of an important case, particularly when it is a Sunday. There is all that coffee the night before, as you take a last (or sometimes first) serious look at the papers, together with cheese snacks and all available distractions competing to draw one’s eye from the dire events of the morrow.

“The lights are beginning to go out for some, including the most able, all over the Temple - and not just the Christmas ones”

December 7, 2012: “A fool may be known by six things: anger without cause; speech without profit; change without progress; inquiry without object; putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends” - Arabian Proverb

There is something wonderfully reassuring about public inquiries. First, we have a scandal; then we have embarrassed politicians who desperately want to kick the problem into the long grass; next there is the high-ranking judge lured into the public arena together with an army of barristers and solicitors; this is followed by months of public hearings where some advocates achieve minor cult status for a very short time and then, after a delay of weeks, months or sometimes years we get the report. Finally, we have the politicians’ response, in which they agree to do anything a clever civil servant could have told them to do in the first place and resolutely refuse to do that which they had no intention of doing from the kick-off. Predictably, whilst our courts fall apart around us and the facilities deteriorate below those of a run-down housing estate and the legal profession is squeezed and browbeaten, there is always plenty of money for these public circuses of utter pointlessness.

A joyous occasion is marred by a spectre at the feast

October 8, 2012: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley” - Robert Burns

I had hoped that my junior, Miss Henrietta Briar-Pitt would be working on the looming case of R. v. Jason Grimble, alleged co-murderer of Britain’s least popular former circuit judge, Claude Allerick, who was shortly to be tried at the Central Criminal Court by Claude’s successor from the judicial charisma by-pass section. Instead of which, I was ensconced in her equestrian pile, due to give her away to Mr Justice Pennington, batchelor knight, until, that is, recent dietary indiscretions caused a parting of her garments at an eve-of-wedding supper, prompting an apparent withdrawal from the nuptial event.