No matter how furiously I work I’m still up to my eyeballs in busy. It’s like having a horological tapeworm (a side effect of which is a tendency to extravagantly surreal yet poor metaphors). So posts have been a little sparse around these parts of late.
Life at the bar, and particularly the family bar makes for an unpredictable schedule. This can often be turned into an opportunity for blogging – a small gap in which any normal person might otherwise slot a spot of nail painting, snoozing, vacuous tv or hoovering, can be readily filled with a blog post. But the flip side is the difficulty of finding time to blog when all the cases stand up and you have back to back trials and paperwork. This has been one such period (although in truth some potential blogging time has been spent with me transfixed to the screen watching the latest hackgate news), and it inevitably results in blog posts of (even) less gravitas and depth. But perhaps since many of those reading will have similarly manic schedules this is no bad thing. Some of you are probably still recovering from the Narey half marathon anyway. I know I am (and I still have to write the second part). I heard an author on radio 4 the other day explain she had deliberately written her chapters to be the perfect length for being read in short stints on the loo (I think it was Germaine Greer talking about The Female Eunuch actually but if I think a screaming child in the back seat of the car drowned her out). So in homage to Germaine (or whoever) this is a bog post.
Some bloggers are more discerning and only write when they have something worth saying. Some admirable recent examples are:
- @_millymoo (Beneath the wig) who writes about her idiosyncratic trial prep rituals
- @adamwagner1 who evidently has the use of the McFly’s deLorean since he seems able to write detailed AND excellent stuff ALL the time both on the UKHR blog and The Guardian (most recently writing about legal aid reform and access to justice from a slightly different perspective)
- @jtownend on the Meejalaw blog explores some really interesting questions around the question of data held and licensed by Her Maj’s Courts & Tribunals Service (although I don’t really understand the criticism of BAILLI for not providing feeds – they already do).
- @njbarmstrong on @richardmoorhead’s Lawyerwatch blog writes a superb piece about the car crash that is LASPO
The problem with Bailii feeds is that they are not full feeds – just the case title. In order to read the full case, it has to be pulled from the Bailii website. This means that the feeds can’t be used for searching by anything except title or any other cunning ways of using the case info (all cases on a particular topic, or referencing particular legislation for example). So sorting out which cases one wants to read is still a matter of going through each individually, or guessing from the title.
Ah thanks – that’s the answer to that question
I enjoyed the libel case too, particularly that point in the judgment where the Telegraph’s legal team must have really regretted putting Lynn’s book into evidence to support her assertion of having a bad memory, without realising that the paragraphs where she describes having been a compulsive liar might be seized upon by the other side. You can almost see them getting lower and lower in their seats at that point in the judgment.
The real mystery in the case is why the editor didn’t read the first paragraph of the article and spike it, since even to be charitable, it wasn’t the run-of-the-mill book review (having accused the author of a factual book of telling lies about having interviewed the author of the review).
One could make a comment about fact-checking by editors of columns written in the Telegraph (particularly those that relate to family law) but that would be a cheap shot…
Go on…
hello, thank you for the link. I was about to answer your question on Bailii feeds, but I see Nearly Legal has beaten me to it – and put it better than I would have.
Thornton v Barber is a worthwhile read – just getting around to reading the full judgment now.