Call me naive but I hadn’t appreciated just how many people hate lawyers. more specifically barristers. More specifically family barristers. I mean I knew we weren’t all that popular (not helped by stupid headlines about ‘fat cat legal aid lawyers’ etc). And I knew a lot of people (most of my friends included) are pretty clueless about what we do (my friends imagine me peppering every sentence with M’Lud and being involved in all sorts of high drama in the courtroom, producing last minute killer evidence from a secret compartment in my bra and asking brilliant questions that instantaneously cause the baddy (only baddies) to break down in a pool of tears and confess all). There are few who understand us, and that was part of the reason for starting this blog.
As far as I can tell most of my clients think I’m alright. They are often frustrated with the system and some expect miracles (which I’m not always able to perform), but I don’t leave court every day thinking the world hates me. I leave court most days thinking I’ve done the best I could do, and on a really good day I leave court thinking I’ve really made a difference.
But I’m surprised at how much the responses to some of the posts on this blog unsettle me. If the people who have posted comments on this blog are representative then the bar has a serious image problem. And the family bar has a catastrophe on its hands. How can the public perception of us be so very different from the world I inhabit every day, where people try really hard to patch up other people’s often unfixable problems and to get families working again? Where has it gone wrong?
I think its quite likely that the posts I’ve got are not truly representative of the public’s view of us. That is to say, those with strong negative views are far more likely to be bothered to comment on a blog like this than those who have no axe to grind. The unhappiest are often the loudest. But I can’t ignore the fact that there are enough of ’em out there who feel strongly enough to pebble dash this blog with invective to warrant some serious thought.