People often ask how long I’ve been doing stand-up comedy. It’s been about six years, although if you asked Barnsley magistrates, they’d say its more like 30 years. When I passed my exams all those years ago I didn’t imagine going on to become a ‘Shit Lawyer’.
Leaving college, I had no idea what I wanted and found work as a lifeguard at the local leisure centre. I saved two children; not in the pool, they just got their heads trapped in a vending machine. I also volunteered one day a week at a Citizens Advice Bureau and instantly fell in love with the big, beautiful law.
Soon after qualifying as a solicitor, New Labour saw fit to caricature defence lawyers as ‘fat cats’, a myth continued by successive governments, during which time our real- terms income fell by 50%. In three decades, the prison population has doubled and magistrates’ courts have halved in number. Those that remain open are falling apart. My regular courthouse was covered in so much black and yellow hazard warning tape at one point; it looked as if HMCTS was trying to recreate a crime scene. In hindsight, I think it was.
Justice was being bludgeoned to death. Failures in disclosure are the biggest cause of wrongful convictions. Inefficiency is endemic, backlogs are unprecedented, and a growing reliance on the private sector to provide essential services has undermined public safety, putting profits first and adding to the torpor of wasted court time and costs.
These are just the good bits. The brave new world of legal aid has become one in which fast and cheap representation is encouraged because it ensures survival, a factory model of practice forcing its lawyers to spend as little time on a case as they can justify. We used to spend time with our clients. Now we process them through a managerial sausage factory which compels defendants to divulge their case before the police or Crown even know their own. Speaking of which, it would be easier to secure the codes to a North Korean nuclear warhead than actual disclosure from the Crown Prosecution Service. Chronic under-resourcing of CPS does mean very few staff have been on a course on how to use the telephone or send an email. More people claim to have seen the Loch Ness monster than a CPS reviewing lawyer. Do they actually exist? I gave up looking.
What can I say? It has been a blast. Thirty years on and heading to extinction, the ‘fat cat’ defence lawyer is on a critically endangered species list. I decided it was time to either get out or persuade the justice secretary to set up a captive breeding programme like they do in zoos, harvesting the eggs and sperm of eminent lawyers so we don’t lose that DNA forever. Leaving seemed the better option.
Writing and comedy became my elaborate escape plan, bringing the crisis in the criminal justice system to the masses. The open mic comedy circuit was a baptism of fire to try out new ideas and test themes, and be paid peanuts and constantly heckled. Not too dissimilar to practising legal aid law.
In August 2022, I debuted my show ‘Shit Lawyer’ at the Edinburgh Festival. Performing 22 shows over 24 days did feel like waiting to be executed every day. I even began to envy people on death row; at least they got a meal. Written for a lay audience, the show sold out. It did so again in 2023 and 2024, suggesting that at a critical time when defence lawyers feel powerless and undervalued, a significant section of the public still care about what’s going on in the criminal justice system. Anticipating Leveson’s independent review, I dedicate this year’s show to preserving jury trials and exploring a range of alternative, unorthodox solutions to ‘speed up justice’. It’s absurdist, but no more so than what is actually going on in the criminal justice system.
There are those in the profession rather sniffy about comedy as a suitable genre for serious issues around the law. I passionately believe these stories need to be told in all available forums, not just our comfortable echo chambers. In the advocates’ room, the public can’t hear you scream. Change can come from the most unlikely of places. Twenty years after the Post Office scandal began, it took a four-part ITV drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, and the subsequent public outcry for the then government to be embarrassed into action. Who would have thought we would be so dependent on the Radio Times for justice?
The day I left court, never to return (never say never), a young lawyer leapt into the advocates’ room like a happy Labrador, punching the air with glee. His client was still at the police station and court listings had officially cut off any court appearance. It was 3pm and the advocate got to leave court early. Me? Yes, of course I would have argued the toss with listings, then actively trawled the other courtrooms to locate those kindred spirits – legal advisers, magistrates, ushers, district judges, prosecutors, probation officers and security officers. We know the ones we wouldn’t approach and the ones we definitely would. Those who, with a wry smile, agree to prolong their already exhausting day so that a complete stranger – a defendant, a human being – is spared a night in a police cell.
This calibre of professional still exists. While they do, there remains hope. The question is, for how long?
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