Law Society’s Gazette, October 1970

View from the country – opening a new officeI am bound to say that, as I walked into the gleaming premises, wearing my jauntiest suit, and a tie just loud enough to be conspicuous without being vulgar, my hopes were pretty high. This was a culmination of months of planning, negotiating, purchasing, arranging and preparing. Most of the new furniture was in position, as indeed was the carefully selected pretty receptionist, radiating charm and capability. Copies of Country Life, The Times and The Field, all brand new, indicated culture and knowledge brushed with a tincture of the great outdoors. A fine basket of carnations and delphiniums added warmth and colour. The stage was set – all it needed was an actor or two.

It was pretty eerie, as a matter of fact, sitting in the long, graceful first-floor room, waiting for the sound of an opening door, the muffled noise of footsteps on the fitted carpets, or even a discreet buzz from the new telephone. After an hour and a half – during which pretty receptionist brought me two cups of coffee in the new bone china cups and I created an all-time record by reading the Law Society’s Gazette from cover to cover, including that very readable contribution ‘View from the country’, which I much enjoyed, I fell to musing on what a backward profession I belonged to. Could there be any enterprise in the world that took up its new position without announcement or advertisement, shuffling silently in, with no louder message to the public than the whisper of the discreet name plate outside the front door?

By this time the prospect of dazzling sales and monstrous estates had vanished from my thoughts. I thought yearningly of a really nasty matrimonial, or the results of a Saturday night punch-up, or a bitter little assault – or even a £7 debt to collect…Correspondence

Have we come to this?This morning I have had two telephone calls from clients. The first was brutally frank: ‘Tommy has just failed all his A-levels, so he can’t do engineering; will you take him into your office and make him a solicitor?’ The second was a similar but slightly more tactful request on behalf of another boy.

Does the public at large regard the profession as a last hope for unsuccessful examinees, or is it just that I appear to have a kind face?JV Armstrong, Hon. Sec., Dorset Law Society, Swanage