LITMIR.BIZ

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in my room at chambers, my three roommates Amir, Jenny and Angus were crouched over Amir’s desk looking at some photographs of a pavement.

      As I walked in, Amir shouted across at me, ‘What do you think, Russ,’ he said, ‘we’re having a debate as to whether this paving stone is a hazard or not. Angus thinks that it is, Jenny thinks that it isn’t.’

      ‘Course it bloody isn’t,’ interjected Jenny, ‘only if you were completely pissed and wearing high heels, and then it’s your own fault, frankly.’

      ‘Was the complainant wearing high-heeled shoes and pissed?’ I asked.

      ‘No,’ said Amir, ‘he was a pensioner.’

      ‘Well they’re always falling over,’ said Jenny.

      ‘They need to be protected,’ said Angus, ‘the duty of care is totally with the council on this.’

      ‘What do you think, Ammie?’ I asked.

      He looked back at the pavement – ‘My instinct says that this will settle,’ he told me.

      And there it is, that word: instinct. It’s absolutely fundamental to our line of work. The ability to sniff the air and guess correctly what’s being blown towards you; the ability, learned from experience, to accurately predict what will happen in a given case.

      Instinct is vital because, as barristers, we are often in a state of ignorance. Think about it: I am not allowed to converse with a jury, I have to guess what they will make of evidence, what they will understand and what they will not. Similarly, I have to second-guess the position of a Judge. I have to instinctively know what will annoy him or her, and what will soothe. And finally, I occasionally have to reach into the mind of a criminal or a client, work out what they are thinking and what advice will be best for them in their particular circumstances.

      I’m not saying that I always get it right, what I am saying is that instinct is important and it’s not something that can be taught in a book or in a lecture theatre, it is something that is acquired over years of practice, it is something that is honed by getting things wrong, by irritating Judges, by watching others.

      It is one of the reasons why barristers get so cross when successive governments have tried to undermine our profession by reducing our rates of pay and allowing others who are not as qualified, not as experienced, who don’t possess the instinct, to do our job.

      In the case of Porky Pie West my instinct told me that she would not get the injunction she wanted, my instinct also told me that the deal that was being offered was a good one, and that she should take it.

      Okay, it was a quick decision. It could turn out to be the wrong decision. As Mrs Murdoch said, I’ll only know if Mr West comes back and throttles his wife. But, somehow, I don’t think that that will happen – somehow, my instinct tells me that out of Porky and her branded husband, the most likely person to see the inside of a courtroom again will be her.

      As my colleagues discuss pavements, my mind goes back to the case of Harvey Mannerley.

      It was one of my first cases, and it showed me just how important instinct was going to be in my career as a barrister.

      Harvey Mannerley was a rather pathetic individual in his mid-twenties. He was accused of harassing an eighteen-year-old girl he had met whilst they were both working in a supermarket warehouse. The girl was called India Williams. She was about to go off to university and found herself, as part of a summer job, working alongside Harvey – well, I say alongside, the reality is that India didn’t really take much notice of Harvey.

      Where she was young and beautiful with a radiant, gleamingly effervescent smile that was just about to be unleashed onto the world in a million exciting ways, Harvey was a sad man with pallid grey skin and black hair that sat on his head as a greasy afterthought. He was thin and gaunt and had the look of someone who spent hours in his own bedroom, wanking.

      He convinced himself that India was smiling for him and he embarked upon a campaign of letter writing. He would send her long, sinister anonymous letters in which he would tell her in fairly unsubtle detail what he wanted to do to her. In short, he was a stalker.

      The evidence was overwhelming – his fingerprints were found on some of the envelopes and a handwriting expert had stated that there was extremely strong evidence to suggest that the handwriting on the letters belonged to Harvey Mannerley.

      The case took place in small town Magistrates Court. I was young, barely 24, fresh out of Bar School – with very little experience and very little instinct. I was told that I wouldn’t have a solicitor with me – you rarely do in the Magistrates Court – and my instructions simply invited me to do my best in the face of very strong evidence.

      I met Harvey in the reception area and took him down to a small, airless, windowless conference room in the basement. He wouldn’t look me in the eye; something that now, with a few years under my belt, I know is a bad sign. Back then, I knew nothing.

      I sat him down and after introducing myself decided to tell him how grave the evidence was. ‘I’ve got be honest with you, Mr Mannerley,’ I said, ‘I think you’ve got a few problems today.’

      At this he looked up at me, seething. ‘I’m not going guilty,’ he spat, ‘there’s no way I’m going guilty.’

      ‘No one’s trying to make you plead to anything,’ I said.

      I paused. The pause was a mistake, a sign of my weakness, my inexperience and lack of confidence, a sign that I wasn’t in control. I now continued in a rather stuttering way. ‘I respect and appreciate that, that’s fine, but, Mr Mannerley—’

      Before I could say anything more, he interjected again, ‘I ain’t pleading guilty. No way. I ain’t done nothing.’

      ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘then can you tell me why your fingerprints are on those envelopes?’

      He shrugged. ‘Whoever was sending them must have got them from the supermarket where I was working – I used to handle hundreds of envelopes – it doesn’t prove anything.’

      I sucked my lips in and nodded as enthusiastically as I could.

      ‘Okay, that’s fine.’ I paused again. It allowed Mannerley to look at me and work out that I wasn’t quite as experienced as I was trying to make out.

      ‘How long have you been doing this for?’ he asked.

      ‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said.

      ‘It bloody does to me,’ said Mannerley, ‘you fucking come in here, telling me to plead guilty.’

      ‘Look, Mr Mannerley, I haven’t told you to plead anything. I’m simply pointing out that the evidence is strong.’

      ‘No it’s not, it’s shit, they can’t prove anything. No one has seen me do anything.’

      ‘Well,’ I said, ‘not only are there the fingerprints, but there’s also a handwriting expert who says that your handwriting is the same as that in the letters.’

      ‘That’s just his opinion.’

      ‘Well, he is an expert. He spends his life having opinions about people’s handwriting. And,’ I continued, ‘the girl herself is convinced it’s you – because of some of the things that you’d said to her.’

      He snorted contemptuously at this, then put his hands over his ears and shouted at me – ‘I am not fucking pleading guilty. Do. You. Understand?’

      At this point, I was actually quite nervous. I realised that I was sitting in a room with a man who may have been capable of anything. I decided that the best thing to do was to simply go into court. ‘Come on then, Mr Mannerley,’ I said and we made our way into the courtroom where I would mount the defence of ‘it wasn’t me, Guv,’ despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

      The Magistrates sat looking at us: the usual three upstanding pillars of the community

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