Odd jobs for clients

James Morton looks back to a time when cutting lawns, rescuing cats and completing a few tax returns helped to maintain a good client base

As it appears that quite a few readers enjoyed the recent column detailing my early days in practice (see [2003] Gazette, 22 May, 18), and in the historical spirit of commemorating this newspaper's centenary, I shall continue with some reminiscences.

For my articles, I was recommended by the local bank manager to a one-man practice that really needed a cheap conveyancer - a discipline of which I knew absolutely nothing.

The practice may be deemed to be somewhere in Greater London, and the man's name to be Simpson.

Simpson's practice was a mixed one, a typical high street firm of the type, now just about extinct.

Simpson had been a clerk himself with what would now be called a top ten firm.

Except, of course, in those days, when being a solicitor was still a profession and not a business, there was no passion for ranking.

He had what was known as 'a good war' in which he had been highly decorated in recognition for services to King and Country and the firm had, in reward, unusually given him articles.

Of course, when he qualified there was no suggestion of a partnership for the man from a none-too-good part of London who had been at one time the firm's office boy.

So on qualification he set up on his own (there was no question of waiting three years in those days).

He had dirty blond hai and looked like the Duke of Windsor.

I was given a desk, a secretary, and a pile of files with the instructions that I must never complete without all the money being in the client account.

Unfortunately, I obeyed this edict too literally and asked the firm's second best client for 7/6d to enable me to complete a purchase.

At the end of the week I was dispatched to complete a transaction - the travelling consisted of three changes of buses and a long walk in the rain.

I was very late.

It was a completion with redemptions of mortgages, new mortgages with different building societies and several middle aged and increasingly hostile managing clerks were fuming at my late arrival and wet appearance.

Completions generally took place on a Friday and these chaps wanted to be off home.

'Have you the form 53?' 'Where's the rates' receipt?' 'What about the undertaking to lodge?' 'Look at the completion statement.

The banker's draft doesn't tally.'

Worn down in a matter of seconds I agreed to telephone the office for instructions.

There was an embarrassing silence while I scrubbed in the file for help.

Eventually I gave up.

'Please, can one of you tell me the office number,' I whined.

There was a serious discussion about my suitability for articles.

Instead I was re-assigned, this time to Simpson's managing clerk and general factotum, a hugely jokey man with iron grey hair brilliantined backwards, who had lost all his teeth in the war.

'French kissing,' he said - but I was not sure what that meant.

He did a bit of litigation, kept the books and doubled as chauffeur and outdoor clerk.

He also had a number of essential other tasks such as cutting the lawns of Simpson's elderly lady clients, rescuing cats from trees and doing their tax returns.

Given all this, it was not surprising that the books were not always up to date.

Simpson's thinking was basic.

If he continued to perform these small services and make no charge then when the elderly women were put in homes by their relatives the conveyancing at fixed rates would be his.

Better still, if there were no relatives he might - and he often did - feature in their wills.

At the time the Law Society had not stamped down on this extremely common practice.

As a result, all clients who had affidavits to be sworn were accompanied to other solicitors by either the managing clerk or me.

This was both part of the service as well as an anti-poaching device on Simpson's part.

He believed that if we were there, other solicitors would be more loath to emphasise the qualities of their own firms to lure our clients.

I may not have learned about the law or about time and motion, but client control was high on the agenda.

Very occasionally Simpson miscalculated.

One lady had all of the tax, cat, lawn services provided and then disappeared from view.

He and I were in the street when we met her at a bus stop.

'I haven't seen you for some time,' Simpson said, raising his homburg.

'No, I've moved to live with my sister,' the client replied.

'But you didn't ask me to do the conveyance.'

'No, I couldn't go on asking you to do things for nothing.'

I had been planning to ask for a small rise that day - but I quickly thought better of it.

James Morton is a former criminal law specialist solicitor and now a freelance journalist