Post by tigerlily on Jan 11, 2008 0:12:10 GMT
First in what may become an occasional series. Hope you enjoy it!
There are many characters in the legal profession.
By that, I don’t mean different personality types, but characters as in larger-than-life people who seem to loom over the landscape in the manner of some ancient monolith. Not all of them are old in terms of years, but they do tend to be among the more life-experienced.
I have had the (at times dubious) privilege of working with a fair number of such folk and would wish to share some of my experiences with you.
This, I have decided, will take the form of a series of pen-portraits. And where better to begin than at the beginning.
Let me take you on a journey, a journey of only a few years, seven years in fact. It is January 2001, and a slightly younger and far more impressionable Me is starting out on the road to what will eventually lead to the proud possession of that all-important piece of stiff A4 paper that we in the profession refer to as the ‘Prac’.
I always loathed land law. So imagine my shock when I discovered that conveyancing was a walk in the park in comparison. How could something that was so difficult to study, so dry and dull and deadly boring, be actually quite simple when it came down to studying how the system of buying, selling and dealing with land, buildings and other property interests works?
I’d already discovered in the previous three months in the battery-farm conditions of bulk re-mortgaging that I was fascinated by musty old deeds and deciphering unregistered titles. All that poking around in history and poring over crackling parchment painstakingly covered in real calligraphy that was written by a clerk a hundred years and more ago, and following the trail of the title to the land or property down through the years to the present day I found enthralling. Sort of like archaelogy without the bones and dirt.
The company for which I worked owned one of the water and sewerage companies in the North of England. This in turn was – still is, in fact – the region’s largest landowner, and in the city centre was a vast climate-controlled fireproofed storage vault where all the title deeds and documents were kept. The very first thing I learned to do was to research title and work out which deed or deeds certain stretches of land contained the water and sewerage pipes and drains that property developers and builders intended to lay. Once I had that figured out, I could match the site drawings to the drawings contained within the title deeds, and from there work out which tenants had to be cajoled into allowing construction workers onsite to carry out the work and whether my company still owned all of the land affected.
There were a couple of landowners who I regularly encountered, on paper at least. Or rather, I encountered their solicitors. Who would pass on their clients’ complaints, ramblings and extortionate and unreasonable demands. A certain well-known equestrian who now stables and trains horses often turned out to be involved.
Once the pipes and sewers have been constructed and inspected, it is down to the water and sewerage companies to adopt them, or take over the management and maintenance of them. This means that if there is a burst sewer or water main, my company had to have the right to enter onto land occupied by tenants or other landowners with very little notice to carry out repairs or to rebuild.
A cautionary word here for those who are buying property or dealing in the buying and selling of property. I know there are some here who deal with such, and I can imagine you sitting there clutching your head and moaning, because you know what I am about to say! Always, but always, check whether you have any water or sewerage easements on the title of the property.
Why, you may ask? Well, because an easement is a legal agreement that is binding on the first and subsequent landowner that allows the water board to enter onto your land and dig up the area for a goodly distance either side of the pipes and drains. This could be six metres, could be ten metres. Could be more if we’re talking about a really big main system. You’ve built a rockery above a pipe? Did you seek permission to do so first? Any erection over a pipe or within the area covered by the easement needs permission first, in case the weight of it is too much for the pipe and might break it.
Building an extension? Your foundations may uncover or damage water pipes or sewers. Or worse yet, you may well find that your extension or garage is in such a position that it has to be demolished to allow access. The easement gives the water board the right to do this, but does not put them under any obligation to rebuild it, merely to return the land to a reasonable condition. That means back to topsoil.
Back to our well-known equestrian and horse trainer, now. Horses, particularly racehorses, can be very highly-strung animals (much like the gentleman in question). They have their routine and need careful handling. Our equestrian gentleman always had the welfare of his steeds forefront in his mind, and would therefore demand on every occasion we dealt with him that there be no access on to his land without at least seven days’ prior written notice. This would give him time to move the horses. He also asked that our workers avoid certain hours of the day, such as the period between 5 and 7 am when they would be out on the moors being exercised.
Which is all well and good, but when a water main or a mains sewer bursts, you cannot sit around waiting for seven days to pass before going on to fix it, or even wait till the geegees are out of the way. Careful negotiating was called for, and it fell into my hands to apply sweet reason to the gentleman via his solicitors. This lead to the occasional telephone call to my head of department, who would in turn pass it on to my line manager who headed the conveyancing team and was in charge of my training.
This benighted soul – I shall call him Peter – would come into view around the partition between the desks opposite mine and the filing cupboards to my right, normally with a worried frown and a sickly grin on his face. Always a consternating sight, a man with a worried frown and sickly grin in conjunction with each other.
Being only a little over five feet tall, I generally wouldn’t see him until he was standing by the corner of the desk. I knew very quickly that if he had that combination of expressions battling for supremacy over his face that it meant The Equestrian Gentleman was on the phone again to bend Peter’s ear. So out would come files and maps and plans, and we would go over them section by section and barter as to which areas we could enter and when and with how much notice. I did manage to sneak in the killer clause, however, which was that in any emergency situation where response time was of the essence we had full and unfettered rights of access at any time and with no notice other than a telephone call to any parts of the land necessary. Only in the direst of emergencies, of course.
This caused The Equestrian Gentleman to gnash his gums down the phone to Peter and express what for him passed as gushing praise along in my direction. ‘She’s a canny lass, Peter, and my God but she drives a hard bargain. You’ve taught her too well’.
Given that his normal language directed at the company involved turning the air in several miles around his locus a beautiful azure shade, this was worthy of note to say the least.
Peter had worked his way up from post room boy in a solicitor’s office to becoming a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, and was a pretty important man within the legal department of the company. He was always beautifully dressed in expensive suits, with snowy white shirts that were crisply ironed and wore tasteful silk ties and well-shined shoes.
He cut an impressive figure, for all his lack of height.
We had a number of excellent secretaries who had worked there for years, along with a newcomer or two. There was always one position that was covered by a temporary secretary, however, partly because we always seemed to be one secretary short and partly to cover maternity leave. Now I have worked as a temporary secretary in any number of law firms and know the drill. Head down, mouth shut, earphones in and get cracking. Ask if you don’t understand something, never assume, and if your work is returned for amending do it with good grace and learn where you went wrong so you don’t make the same mistakes again./
Alas, not all our visitors had learned the lesson. One lady in particular stands out in my memory, and it partly down to Peter that she does so. I cannot now recall her name, but she was a Bristolian of a certain age and had had any number of unlucky happenstances befall her. Quite what she was doing so far north of Bristol I do not know, but she had not lost one trace of her accent. She loved to talk (oh my word, how she loved to talk!), and the secretary for who she was covering sat behind the low partition opposite my desk. When seated, these were high enough so that you could see only about the top of a head and the eyes of the person opposite. When standing, they were about waist high on me.
We worked flexitime. Flexitime is a marvellous invention and should be utilised by every employer. It especially suits those of us who are not good at doing mornings, as it allows the arrival at work by any time before 10 am and the departure from work up to 6 pm. Later, in fact, if you have security swipecards to leave the building with and have had a quiet word with the security guard to let you out at a certain time. Very useful for making up time!
So it came to pass that this Bristolian lady and I were still at our desks relatively late in the evening. All was quiet around us save for the rattling of keys, when I became aware of a presence behind me. I looked up, and there was Peter, come out to get a file from the cabinets and approaching from the long way round as the file he needed was on our side of the cabinets and not on the same side as his little office.
The file in question was on the top shelf of the cabinet. These cabinets stood around 6 feet high and looked like ordinary cupboards with roller doors. The files were stored in slings suspended from rails that ran from front to back of the cupboards, so the files went sideways-in rather than being stored in deep drawers.
Peter stood there looking around. ‘Lost something, Peter?’
‘I can’t seem to see the kickstool anywhere, and I need a file from the top shelf’.
‘Which one?’
Upon hearing, I stood and walked over to the cupboard in question, located the file and passed it down to him.
He accepted it with only the slightest of pinkness around his ears and set off in the direction of his office, when he was stopped in his tracks by the Bristolian purr of the temporary secretary (who had taken something of a shine to him).
‘Peter...’
‘Yes?’
‘How tall are you, anyway?’
I think I actually may have stopped breathing for a second. I looked up. Looked at her. Looked at Peter. He had this strange look of panic on his face, and the same sickly grin The Equestrian Gentleman usually brought to it. He cast me a glance of unbelief, panic and embarrassment and took a deep breath and blurted:
‘er...five foot two. And a half!’
And he fled.
I managed not to laugh. Not even a smirk. Until I was setting off for home a little later, which lead me past his office door.
I stuck my head through the open doorway and grinned at him, and he gave me That Look that said ‘I know you’re going to say something flippant, because you always do. And I bet I know what it will be about’.
‘Night, Peter!;
‘Night!’
‘Half an inch can mean so much to a girl, Peter. See you in the morning!’
As I commented, Peter always wore very well tailored suits. Well, usually. There was one suit that was not quite right. It was a lovely suit in every way, save that the sleeves were a couple of inches too long and overshot his shirt cuffs, the body came a couple of inches or so lower on him than it ought and the trousers hung in folds above his shoes.
The first time he wore it, he looked somewhat self-conscious. My colleague to my left sucked in her breath as he passed, and remarked in low tones ‘Do you suppose his wife bought him that suit, hoping he might grow into it?’
She had a wicked tongue on her, that one.
My abiding memory of Peter though has to be of the outfit he habitually wore when we were out on the town for any reason. He had a fondness for slim panatella cigars, and would wear a casual shirt, chinos, suede shoes with a chunky sole and a black leather jacket in a kind of blazer cut.
It would have been a blazer cut on a man of larger stature. Much as I was fond of him, I confess that on Peter it looked as though he had watched Pulp Fiction and decided to model himself on John Travolta’s character, Vincent Vega. I will always remember him standing by the dance floor with slim panatella in one hand, bottle of lager in the other, before setting both down on a table and taking one of our secretaries by the hand and heading off to strut his funky stuff.
He was a kind and patient man who taught me a great deal. More than I perhaps realised at the time. I still think of him fondly and hope he continues to do a grand job of running the conveyancing team.
There are many characters in the legal profession.
By that, I don’t mean different personality types, but characters as in larger-than-life people who seem to loom over the landscape in the manner of some ancient monolith. Not all of them are old in terms of years, but they do tend to be among the more life-experienced.
I have had the (at times dubious) privilege of working with a fair number of such folk and would wish to share some of my experiences with you.
This, I have decided, will take the form of a series of pen-portraits. And where better to begin than at the beginning.
Let me take you on a journey, a journey of only a few years, seven years in fact. It is January 2001, and a slightly younger and far more impressionable Me is starting out on the road to what will eventually lead to the proud possession of that all-important piece of stiff A4 paper that we in the profession refer to as the ‘Prac’.
I always loathed land law. So imagine my shock when I discovered that conveyancing was a walk in the park in comparison. How could something that was so difficult to study, so dry and dull and deadly boring, be actually quite simple when it came down to studying how the system of buying, selling and dealing with land, buildings and other property interests works?
I’d already discovered in the previous three months in the battery-farm conditions of bulk re-mortgaging that I was fascinated by musty old deeds and deciphering unregistered titles. All that poking around in history and poring over crackling parchment painstakingly covered in real calligraphy that was written by a clerk a hundred years and more ago, and following the trail of the title to the land or property down through the years to the present day I found enthralling. Sort of like archaelogy without the bones and dirt.
The company for which I worked owned one of the water and sewerage companies in the North of England. This in turn was – still is, in fact – the region’s largest landowner, and in the city centre was a vast climate-controlled fireproofed storage vault where all the title deeds and documents were kept. The very first thing I learned to do was to research title and work out which deed or deeds certain stretches of land contained the water and sewerage pipes and drains that property developers and builders intended to lay. Once I had that figured out, I could match the site drawings to the drawings contained within the title deeds, and from there work out which tenants had to be cajoled into allowing construction workers onsite to carry out the work and whether my company still owned all of the land affected.
There were a couple of landowners who I regularly encountered, on paper at least. Or rather, I encountered their solicitors. Who would pass on their clients’ complaints, ramblings and extortionate and unreasonable demands. A certain well-known equestrian who now stables and trains horses often turned out to be involved.
Once the pipes and sewers have been constructed and inspected, it is down to the water and sewerage companies to adopt them, or take over the management and maintenance of them. This means that if there is a burst sewer or water main, my company had to have the right to enter onto land occupied by tenants or other landowners with very little notice to carry out repairs or to rebuild.
A cautionary word here for those who are buying property or dealing in the buying and selling of property. I know there are some here who deal with such, and I can imagine you sitting there clutching your head and moaning, because you know what I am about to say! Always, but always, check whether you have any water or sewerage easements on the title of the property.
Why, you may ask? Well, because an easement is a legal agreement that is binding on the first and subsequent landowner that allows the water board to enter onto your land and dig up the area for a goodly distance either side of the pipes and drains. This could be six metres, could be ten metres. Could be more if we’re talking about a really big main system. You’ve built a rockery above a pipe? Did you seek permission to do so first? Any erection over a pipe or within the area covered by the easement needs permission first, in case the weight of it is too much for the pipe and might break it.
Building an extension? Your foundations may uncover or damage water pipes or sewers. Or worse yet, you may well find that your extension or garage is in such a position that it has to be demolished to allow access. The easement gives the water board the right to do this, but does not put them under any obligation to rebuild it, merely to return the land to a reasonable condition. That means back to topsoil.
Back to our well-known equestrian and horse trainer, now. Horses, particularly racehorses, can be very highly-strung animals (much like the gentleman in question). They have their routine and need careful handling. Our equestrian gentleman always had the welfare of his steeds forefront in his mind, and would therefore demand on every occasion we dealt with him that there be no access on to his land without at least seven days’ prior written notice. This would give him time to move the horses. He also asked that our workers avoid certain hours of the day, such as the period between 5 and 7 am when they would be out on the moors being exercised.
Which is all well and good, but when a water main or a mains sewer bursts, you cannot sit around waiting for seven days to pass before going on to fix it, or even wait till the geegees are out of the way. Careful negotiating was called for, and it fell into my hands to apply sweet reason to the gentleman via his solicitors. This lead to the occasional telephone call to my head of department, who would in turn pass it on to my line manager who headed the conveyancing team and was in charge of my training.
This benighted soul – I shall call him Peter – would come into view around the partition between the desks opposite mine and the filing cupboards to my right, normally with a worried frown and a sickly grin on his face. Always a consternating sight, a man with a worried frown and sickly grin in conjunction with each other.
Being only a little over five feet tall, I generally wouldn’t see him until he was standing by the corner of the desk. I knew very quickly that if he had that combination of expressions battling for supremacy over his face that it meant The Equestrian Gentleman was on the phone again to bend Peter’s ear. So out would come files and maps and plans, and we would go over them section by section and barter as to which areas we could enter and when and with how much notice. I did manage to sneak in the killer clause, however, which was that in any emergency situation where response time was of the essence we had full and unfettered rights of access at any time and with no notice other than a telephone call to any parts of the land necessary. Only in the direst of emergencies, of course.
This caused The Equestrian Gentleman to gnash his gums down the phone to Peter and express what for him passed as gushing praise along in my direction. ‘She’s a canny lass, Peter, and my God but she drives a hard bargain. You’ve taught her too well’.
Given that his normal language directed at the company involved turning the air in several miles around his locus a beautiful azure shade, this was worthy of note to say the least.
Peter had worked his way up from post room boy in a solicitor’s office to becoming a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, and was a pretty important man within the legal department of the company. He was always beautifully dressed in expensive suits, with snowy white shirts that were crisply ironed and wore tasteful silk ties and well-shined shoes.
He cut an impressive figure, for all his lack of height.
We had a number of excellent secretaries who had worked there for years, along with a newcomer or two. There was always one position that was covered by a temporary secretary, however, partly because we always seemed to be one secretary short and partly to cover maternity leave. Now I have worked as a temporary secretary in any number of law firms and know the drill. Head down, mouth shut, earphones in and get cracking. Ask if you don’t understand something, never assume, and if your work is returned for amending do it with good grace and learn where you went wrong so you don’t make the same mistakes again./
Alas, not all our visitors had learned the lesson. One lady in particular stands out in my memory, and it partly down to Peter that she does so. I cannot now recall her name, but she was a Bristolian of a certain age and had had any number of unlucky happenstances befall her. Quite what she was doing so far north of Bristol I do not know, but she had not lost one trace of her accent. She loved to talk (oh my word, how she loved to talk!), and the secretary for who she was covering sat behind the low partition opposite my desk. When seated, these were high enough so that you could see only about the top of a head and the eyes of the person opposite. When standing, they were about waist high on me.
We worked flexitime. Flexitime is a marvellous invention and should be utilised by every employer. It especially suits those of us who are not good at doing mornings, as it allows the arrival at work by any time before 10 am and the departure from work up to 6 pm. Later, in fact, if you have security swipecards to leave the building with and have had a quiet word with the security guard to let you out at a certain time. Very useful for making up time!
So it came to pass that this Bristolian lady and I were still at our desks relatively late in the evening. All was quiet around us save for the rattling of keys, when I became aware of a presence behind me. I looked up, and there was Peter, come out to get a file from the cabinets and approaching from the long way round as the file he needed was on our side of the cabinets and not on the same side as his little office.
The file in question was on the top shelf of the cabinet. These cabinets stood around 6 feet high and looked like ordinary cupboards with roller doors. The files were stored in slings suspended from rails that ran from front to back of the cupboards, so the files went sideways-in rather than being stored in deep drawers.
Peter stood there looking around. ‘Lost something, Peter?’
‘I can’t seem to see the kickstool anywhere, and I need a file from the top shelf’.
‘Which one?’
Upon hearing, I stood and walked over to the cupboard in question, located the file and passed it down to him.
He accepted it with only the slightest of pinkness around his ears and set off in the direction of his office, when he was stopped in his tracks by the Bristolian purr of the temporary secretary (who had taken something of a shine to him).
‘Peter...’
‘Yes?’
‘How tall are you, anyway?’
I think I actually may have stopped breathing for a second. I looked up. Looked at her. Looked at Peter. He had this strange look of panic on his face, and the same sickly grin The Equestrian Gentleman usually brought to it. He cast me a glance of unbelief, panic and embarrassment and took a deep breath and blurted:
‘er...five foot two. And a half!’
And he fled.
I managed not to laugh. Not even a smirk. Until I was setting off for home a little later, which lead me past his office door.
I stuck my head through the open doorway and grinned at him, and he gave me That Look that said ‘I know you’re going to say something flippant, because you always do. And I bet I know what it will be about’.
‘Night, Peter!;
‘Night!’
‘Half an inch can mean so much to a girl, Peter. See you in the morning!’
As I commented, Peter always wore very well tailored suits. Well, usually. There was one suit that was not quite right. It was a lovely suit in every way, save that the sleeves were a couple of inches too long and overshot his shirt cuffs, the body came a couple of inches or so lower on him than it ought and the trousers hung in folds above his shoes.
The first time he wore it, he looked somewhat self-conscious. My colleague to my left sucked in her breath as he passed, and remarked in low tones ‘Do you suppose his wife bought him that suit, hoping he might grow into it?’
She had a wicked tongue on her, that one.
My abiding memory of Peter though has to be of the outfit he habitually wore when we were out on the town for any reason. He had a fondness for slim panatella cigars, and would wear a casual shirt, chinos, suede shoes with a chunky sole and a black leather jacket in a kind of blazer cut.
It would have been a blazer cut on a man of larger stature. Much as I was fond of him, I confess that on Peter it looked as though he had watched Pulp Fiction and decided to model himself on John Travolta’s character, Vincent Vega. I will always remember him standing by the dance floor with slim panatella in one hand, bottle of lager in the other, before setting both down on a table and taking one of our secretaries by the hand and heading off to strut his funky stuff.
He was a kind and patient man who taught me a great deal. More than I perhaps realised at the time. I still think of him fondly and hope he continues to do a grand job of running the conveyancing team.