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Sidelines Manus Straw
Manus Straw used to find himself in a spin over rotating departments
How I learned
to love the law
I imagine back in the day the typical
trainee was like Bob Cratchit,
hunched over a single candle, chained
(mostly metaphorically) to a clearly
delineated set of tasks, and
accustomed to getting the book
hurled at him for misplacing that
apostrophe on page 56. Now, of
course, things are completely
different. It’s a Blackberry that gets
hurled, not a book.
And the fun starts over again every
time you change departments. As a
trainee I saw myself as a legal globetrotter,
drawing gasps of admiration
as I shot through loopholes from any
angle. This dazzling pretence would
persist until an associate surveyed my
first piece of work, whereupon they
would promptly conclude I was less
globe-trotter, more Delboy-Trotter. I
soon learned to make sure my work
wasn’t checked so carefully – by
taking it to the nearest partner. I’m
not saying the partners were lazy, but
they had a lot on their plates (witness
the length of their lunches).
Changing departments was a
terrific pain and was effectively like
starting a new job each time. You had
to constantly re-earn goodwill, learn
each partner’s idiosyncrasies and
work out all the weird politics: “Of
course we haven’t been robbed – the
partner’s room always looks that
way”; “Don’t ever try to speak to that
associate before 11am”; “Never
mention weddings to our paralegal
or she will cry”.
At the end of the stretch each trainee
had to give their successor a note of
what had been happening. These
notes were usually more in keeping
with the progress of their files as the
trainee would have had it, rather than
any rational reflection of what had
actually occurred. The one rule was
that it was good behaviour not to drop
www.lawscotjobs.co.uk
anybody else in it for past errors.
Nevertheless one of these notes
still got me into hot water with a
particularly serious trainee. We had
never hit it off, and this was
exacerbated by the fact that I freely
admitted I thought she was great
looking – if perhaps a tad athletic. I
would regale staff with tales of my
botched attempts to woo the “Sturdy
Stunner”, and cheer up secretaries
that the Stunner had just bawled out
during one of her frequent tantrums,
by telling them that it was just the
side effects of her steroids, or that she
only kept all those files in her room
so that she could use them as weights.
I have no doubt that this hilarity
got reported back to Sturdy, and
when she barged into my new
department, waving my note of work
in my face, I feared for my life. (Even
if we were finally getting up close and
personal.) It turned out that she had
just totally misread a sentence and
jumped to conclusions. She barged
back out and sent a terse email which
was just shy of a proper apology. (I’m
pretty sure that a while later the firm
ended up using Sturdy on lots of
advertising material, only for her to
Some
departments
certainly had
horror
reputations.
Worst of all was
“Department
Death”, neatly
named after
both the nature
of the work and
the nature of
the staff
leave the next month. Whoops!)
Department rotation also left
trainees waiting nervously to hear
which seat they were getting next. (I
never paid too much heed to rumours
of bad seats. I reckoned that if a seat
was that bad, I would just sneak into
another room after 5pm and change
it.) Some departments certainly had
horror reputations. Worst of all was
“Department Death”, neatly named
after both the nature of the work and
the nature of the staff.
Once I took the opportunity to leak
a draft rota, with destinations such as
“hell in a hand cart”, “the job centre”,
and so on. You can imagine my
scepticism when an apparently
genuine draft was circulated a week
later. Its credibility was admittedly
boosted by its having been found on
the printer of the partner who had
once driven away with the keys to the
office safe still on his car roof. But I
still wasn’t sure it could be relied on.
For a start it was titled “Version 1”.
Like “World War 1”, I couldn’t help
thinking that there might be more to
come. It also set out that the trainee
with a family connection to the
managing partner and the trainee
who wore the plunging green jumper
on Dress Down Friday were both
going to Department Death. There
was no way that was going to happen.
I was right. By fair means or foul, the
official rota released a week later gave
them the plum jobs, while remaining
the same for most of the rest of us.
Reports that “World War 1” and
“World War 2” are to be renamed
“those wee scuffles before it all kicked
off over the altered rota at Manus
Straw’s firm” are unconfirmed at the
time of writing…
Manus Straw is the pen name of a
practising solicitor
December 09 theJournal / 59