As my first six swoops steadily to its conclusion, I have been kept busy. The odd chap mentioned in my previous post has gone from not looking or talking to me, to suddenly acting like my best friend. He has provided me with a few bits of interesting work, not simply confined to crime, which is good. I did a couple of Appeal advices for him, and they were both sent off to the solicitors unamended, so gold star to me! Also an advice on a slightly boring Commercial contract/Business rates matter is currently being worked on. Despite strange initial dealings with him, I now find this chap to be interesting and funny.
Other than this I have been sitting in a couple of very interesting trials. Last week it was a charge of double GBH in circumstances where if found guilty, the Defendant would have been subject to an indeterminate prison sentence because of his previous. Fortunately for our guy, the jury took just 9 minutes to acquit him! A record time for the experienced barrister I was sitting behind. This week it's another serious GBH, coupled with a kidnap, so all very God Father like. Such gratuitous violence makes a welcome change, as my PM deals with a lot of sex crime, particularly dealing with children, which can get rather heavy going and yucky dealing with the Defendant's involved. Further a senior member of chambers has got a murder retrial coming up, so I've also been familiarising myself with those, extensive, papers.
I'm still very eager to get on with my second six - got my advocacy course before then though, which no doubt will prove interesting.
All the best to everyone - I see Olpas its gearing itself up to "that" time of year again. If I can be of any assistance to anyone embarking on the sole destroying pastime of pupillage applications, please feel free to get in touch.
PB
