Fish Sunday Thinking / Schlüsselroman über Referendariat in London

The Independent berichtete am 25. August:

bq. The sexual antics and misbehaviour of some of the City’s richest lawyers are uncovered in a novel that threatens to scandalise the legal profession.
Binge-drinking, bullying and licentious corporate bonding sessions are all explicitly recounted by the author, a 27-year-old solicitor who claims his book is based on events that took place at one of London’s biggest law firms.

Der Autor, Alex Gilmore (ein Pseudonym), arbeitete als Referendar in einer Londoner Großkanzlei und will andere warnen. Er sagte:

bq. “My book is typical of what goes on in many City law firms. Sex is used as a currency to advance careers and junior lawyers who don’t play ball find themselves out in the cold.”

Vor zwei Wochen war der Autor nicht bekannt:

bq. Senior partners in charge of the top London law firms will be hoping that the name of the firm remains secret. A partner at one of the main London law firms said: “If it turns out to be us then the proverbial excrement will truly hit the fan.”

Inzwischen hat die Daily Mail veröffentlicht, dass der Anwalt Paul Wragg und die Kanzlei Hammonds ist. Auch bei RollOnFriday, unter community – discussion – ein Forum für Leser.

Bei amazon.de bestellen:

Fish Sunday Thinking

(Via UK Criminal Justice Weblog)

6 thoughts on “Fish Sunday Thinking / Schlüsselroman über Referendariat in London

  1. Daily Mail, Friday, 26 Aug 2005, p. 41: headline – ‘Confessions of a lawyer turn suddenly from fact into fiction’.

    Quote: ‘His true identity exposed, Mr Wragg suddenly began to insist that his book was purely a work of imagination.

    And Hammonds declared that, far from being a hotbed of sexist banter and saucy romps, it is in fact a thoroughly respectable workplace where employees’ breast size is irrelevant’.

    Judging from the white-as-a-sheep picture of a bespectacled and wincing Mr. Wragg, I suspect he may have been disgruntled at being shackled by marriage whilst still in a training contract.

  2. What is the lowdown on Harry Mount’s ‘My Brief Career – The Trials of a Young Lawyer’ – about the Bar, I believe?I agree one needs to see a bit of this tome to judge it. On the last point, I will give way to your greater knowledge.

  3. Margaret, you make an excellent connection.

    Fish Sunday Thinking seems to be a trainee Solicitor’s spoof on pupil – trainee – Barrister Harry Mount’s work that was published back in April 2004 and did not receive a very favourable write-up at p. 38 of the Une 2004 issue of Counsel, the Magazine of the Bar of Eng. & Wales.

    But, then again, would the Bar reviewer, Edward Devereux, have risked a backlash by endorsing the jibes? ‘Barristers are arrogant, pompous, calculating, humourless, rude, dreary bullies whose minds lack anything that speaks of originality or lateral thinking’.

    The critique is headlined: ‘Nasty, brutish and short? Pupillage is best viewed like a set of jabs in the buttocks before a safari holiday: unpleasant but worthwhile; not quickly repeated but necessary.’

    Later on: ‘Now Mount, with little skill (‘his prose style reminded me of my Ladybird Books’)and cavalier abandon, seeks to lob a whole lot of maggots in our direction to assist in the putrefaction of the rotten ones and the rest of us.

    What is a pity about the book, perhaps more importantly, is that there are real grievances that need to be aired about pupillage and Mount does not air them. (Then an obscure rant about the way Chambers take pupillage – traineeship – decisions).’

    My take on both works of fiction, faction or fact is surprise that these – brave – stories are coming out only now. In the last millennium there were just as many cases or ‘affairs’ going on that Solicitors’ firms were left to weed out. Then the Bar Council took the hint and got involved in sex and racial harassment guidelines.

    The Eng. & Wales Law Society turns a blind eye to Solicitors’ affairs with clients or trainees. Quote from the 1980’s to a cuckolded cli4nt husband: ‘if we struck off every Solicitor who had an affair with a client, there wouldn’t be many Solicitors left’.

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