'Poephol of the Bailey' - Thought Leader

One of the funniest series of books you’ll ever read is John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey. Each one tells a different story about Horace Rumpole, a criminal barrister who spends his days in the criminal courts of England trying to keep his rogues out of jail. My son Joshua and I love reading them and because I am also a criminal specialist, he calls me “Poephol of the Bailey”.

The books, which are very close to the real thing, owe their accuracy to the fact that Mortimer is a barrister. He knows what it is like to be a member of chambers, go down to court and deal with clients, solicitors and judges — the life he is describing parallels his own.

The fact that you have to be slightly punchy to be a criminal attorney or advocate also helps when you are trying to find the funny side of what is a highly intense pressure-cooker.

Down our way we use to have what was known as the waggit — pronounced “wag” (Afrikaans) “git“. Don’t try looking it up — it has no meaning other than the one we assigned to it. A waggit is a prank you play on your articled clerk on the day he or she starts. If you do it on the second day, it won’t work because anyone who knows me will assume it’s probably some form of practical joke.

They arrive at the office with their new briefcases and starched outfits. They are ready to become lawyers — a very serious business! The receptionist tells them to come through to my office.

I always make sure they sit and fidget in the chair in front of me while I pore over some technical legal point. Then, without looking up, I give them the “Kill for Our Clients” speech.

You know the one: “… And we would rather bleed than let a client down, if we tell a client it will happen, then it happens … waffle waffle — more syrup with your waffle, John?”

Then, when I have them nodding and agreeing … I set the waggit.

One Polish lady, then in her mid-20s, was a very serious clerk. She was told that we were in the middle of a highly technical scientific case involving measurements.

“Advocate Epstein [whom I saw on Monday for the first time in years] has a number of weights which he is working with. Please go up to chambers and tell him you want the long weight.”

I then advised advocate Epsein, SC, who has on occasion sat as an acting judge, that our lady was on her way for a long weight and please could he see that she gets it.

When she arrived at chambers on instruction from her serious attorney bosses and asked the most eminent counsel if she could have the long weight, he was most helpful and told her to take a seat in reception.

After a couple of hours and a no-show from the advocate, she asked if she could just pop through to his chamber from reception. She then asked counsel if she could have the long weight. To which he replied: “But you’ve just had it.”

They were painting the walls in Innes Chambers on that day and she left an imprint of her fist by the lifts — poor thing.

And there are more. After the “Kill for Our Client” speech we’ve had clerks storm the Receiver of Revenue offices in Rissik Street in order to obtain SA 456 “tax-evasion forms” (and don’t come back without it); clerks who turn up at the First National Bank demanding the scales to balance the trust account; and clerks who attend upon various liquidators for the handle used to wind up estates.

And they went!

It became widely known in our offices that first-day clerks got the waggit.

The best waggit did not fall to a first-day clerk but to an attorney who knew about them when he joined us. He had left law for a number of years and then returned to our offices. On his first day, Charles (not his real name) told me that I’d never catch him, and advised me not to bother with it.

Fact is, it hadn’t crossed my mind as he wasn’t a first-day clerk, but the fact that he raised it and told me he would never be caught out made it irresistible.

I assured him that nothing could be further from my mind. In the same breath I asked him when he had handled his last divorce. He said about 10 years before, so I asked him whether he would be able to take an instruction from a new client at 2pm. He seemed happy to get his first day off to a productive start.

As he walked out of my office at about 9am, I was on the phone to the nearest escort agency: “Send me a girl but she must not dress up like a tart.”

Not trusting my colleagues, I told no one.

At 2pm — four hours after Charles had told me I’d never catch him — my receptionist told me that “Mrs Barnard” was here to see me.

I fetched her from the front and put her in the boardroom with the following instructions: “You are Mrs Barnard, you are here for a divorce. Your husband beats you senseless. You have to show your prokureur [sic] the bruises. You then drop all your clothing and refuse to put them back on. No sex! Just look at the bruises. If I arrive and your kit is off, easiest money you’ve ever made!”

I then called Charles and told him to go through to the boardroom: his divorcée was waiting for him.

I then called the whole office together and told them what was happening in our boardroom. We waited 10 minutes and one of the partners went to “get a book” out of the boardroom. The door was locked. I then allowed the crowd to stand outside the boardroom “wondering” why it was locked.

After a couple more minutes, I rang Charles and told him I needed the boardroom.

When I got to the door, he dragged me into the room and locked the door behind me. There, in her birthday suit, was Mrs Barnard, looking out of the Carlton Centre fifth-floor window, at a loss to understand why her attorney wouldn’t check her bruises.

The man was as white as a sheet.

The more I kept trying to welcome him to the firm, the more he kept telling me: “No, you don’t understand, we’ve got big shit here!”

We had to give him sugar water.

They don’t teach you that at Harvard Law School either.