Bygone days mowing lawns

Interesting that the main reason nearly half the solicitor trainees have decided to join the profession is to help people. Naturally, as befits the senior branch of the profession, young barristers had an even higher percentage of those wishing to do good. Interesting, too, that a solicitor wrote suggesting that those of 20 years’ standing should be polled to see what their motives had been.

 Even worse for those of over 50 years – and particularly this one. I am not sure that we had even heard of pro bono work, certainly not those of us who were articled to city firms. No question of going down the law centre to help out; the first one would not open for years. North Kensington opened on 17 July 1970.

No thought of doing good, just an inability to pass mathematics at ‘O’ level sent me down the path to being a solicitor. Looking back, it seems amazing that there was no requirement of basic mathematics for entry into the profession. No wonder there were so many defaults. I remember asking the bookkeeper in one firm which was the credit side of the books and he replied, without a trace of irony, ‘the side nearest the window’.

As for pro bono work, that consisted of mowing elderly lady clients’ lawns and taking them shopping, and once rescuing a cat from a tree. ‘Of course, there’s no charge, Miss Smith. Morton’s happy to do it for you.’ It was all part of Simpson’s charm effort in the hope Miss Smith might leave him something in her will. Nothing in those days about getting another firm to advise if your client left her favourite solicitor a few hundred.

And if, in the days with the city firm I was with before Simpson, I even spoke to litigants in person as they struggled round the courts, I got a stern warning from my clerk that I was to have nothing to do with these very likely vermin-infested people. They could wait another 20 years until North Kensington opened.

 James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor