A private viewing of La Gioconda! France can confer few greater privileges on the foreign visitor than this. Last week’s IBA conference in Paris featured a welcome reception at the Louvre that allowed lawyers the free run of the place, including an audience with the Mona Lisa herself. Obiter was among those to pay homage, along with Mark Stephens, co-chair of the IBA’s Human Rights Institute (pictured). Mark’s smile is altogether less enigmatic than her own, it must be said.

Mark Stephens and the Mona Lisa

Downstairs, hundreds of dazzled attendees were treated to a smorgasbord (‘buffet a la scandinave’) of quintessentially French tableaux. They were all there: the vintage Renaults and deux chevaux; the checked chanteuse rendering Serge Gainsbourg classic La Javanaise (check out Juliette Greco on Spotify, kids); the powdered and puffed aristos posing for pictures with the sans-culottes.

No Robespierre or Danton though, oddly. ‘Activist lawyers’ both, one can safely say. Not that it did prove to be safe for either, at the finish.

The vins blancs were a cut (or guillotine blade) above the average of a typical law firm party in London, too. What a pity we had to be up at 7am sharp on Monday.

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