hear the sniggers as the progress down the corridor.
I’ve managed to nip home to grab the odd shower and a clean outfit, but without the usual hour spent with my ghd’s and liberal application of grooming products, I’m really a sight to behold. To be honest, I’m not overly concerned with the state of my hair at the moment, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Having spent the entire weekend reading all of the witness statements, interviews and experts reports in the Hobbs trial, I’ve just been handed my trial for tomorrow, Ms Goodridge and her benefit fraud. I could really do without it, but it should be finished in a day. The good news is that Serena is prosecuting me; I haven’t had time to answer any of her calls or meet her for drinks since last week so it’ll be good to catch up.
It’s funny being against each other, you have to temporarily put your friendship to one side and focus on your side of the case. Luckily, we always manage to laugh about it afterwards and the loser buys the first round.
I re-read Ms Goodridge’s case and jot down a few questions that I need to ask her when she tells her side of the story. In essence, it’ll all come down to whether or not the jury believe her explanation of things and in theory, should be quite a simple trial. Enough is enough. I throw a few papers into a travel bag I keep in the bottom draw of my desk and switch the desk lamp off. Outside I can see people packing into bars, couples going into a nearby pizzeria and all-round general merriment. I’m tempted to wander down to the bar and see if anyone’s about but I know it’ll end in tears if they are. The last thing I need tomorrow morning is a hangover.
I double check that I’ve got everything I need from the Hobbs case and shut the door. I hope Corr was satisfied with my case summary that I sent to him yesterday. I haven’t heard anything from him, but I guess that in this case, no news has to be good news.
By the time I’ve driven home, gotten undressed and crawled into bed it’s after eleven. Sebastian is sound asleep next to me and as much as I’d like to wake him for a chat I leave him alone. As I drift off to sleep my dreams are full of being clubbed to death with footballs whilst taking part in a penalty shoot-out.
Our trial has been listed in front of one of my favourite Judges. Young, with a wicked sense of humour and a pronounced twinkle in his pale blue eyes, he is a delight to appear before. He isn’t one for messing about and dithering over irrelevant pieces of evidence and he won’t stand for any farcical submissions or ludicrous cross-examination. He’s in a fine mood this morning I note, as I watch him speed through the short applications to be heard before our trial is called on.
Serena is sat, ready to go in her place on Counsel’s row and she looks slightly tense. I can’t imagine any reason why this trial would cause her any loss of sleep; all she has to do is read out parts of the evidence and summarise the rest before the Defendant has to face the jury.
The Judge is losing patience with a junior barrister from another set of Chambers. Instead of getting to the whole point of his application, he’s skirting around the issue, muddling up various dates and confusing the statutes he’s citing. From experience, I know that this judge doesn’t suffer fools gladly and will make him repeat his submissions until he gets it right. I don’t think he does it to be cruel, I suspect he has a genuine desire to help people learn from their mistakes.
When I was in front of him for the first time, not only did I manage to rely on a piece of law that’d been out of date for the last thirty years, but call him ‘Sir’ throughout as well. I had been blathering on for what seemed like a lifetime, but in actual fact couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes before through our interactions I realised my schoolgirl error and righted the situation. Since then, I’ve developed a great respect for him, instead of sitting back and letting people perform poorly, he demands the quality of advocacy necessary for his