Every time I have to explain to a youthful colleague what something now defunct was and how it used to work, I feel a little bit older…

This week I thought someone was mistakenly evangelical about the new marketing idea that is corners. (corners being the little cleverly die cut pieces of card, showing a chambers’ logo that one used to wrap around the corner of a skeleton argument before stapling, to make it look *mwah* and tip top!). As it turned out, in fact the image they had shared was of a digital corner on a digital document, which was rather a cute idea. Shoulda worn my varifocals…

But just as I was mentally dummy slapping myself for that misunderstanding, there came a comment about pink tape (the thing not the blog). Which really has now fallen out of use entirely (covid being the death knell). When I started this blog in 2007 pink tape was still a recognisable thing which had meaning, at least to the lawyers who read this blog, if not necessarily all the non-lawyers. But I realise that as every year passes fewer of my colleagues actually remember getting a brief tied in pink tape, or remember the paper explosions that would occur if you were insufficiently skilled or insufficiently careful in your tying. How many remember having drawers full of the stuff, and using it for everything from tying a ponytail, to stringing up beans, to attaching it on your suitcase so you could spot it on the carousel at the airport?

When I started Pink Tape the blog, it wasn’t with a wistful look back at the olden days. It was just an everyday thing, and a colour that, for me, was a semi-political statement signifying rebellion. I married in a bright pink wedding dress (I had some vague recollection of my grandmother idly commenting that if a woman didn’t get married in white it meant she was a *gasp* ‘Jesobel’, which sounded quite exciting)… and Pink Tape had resonance for me as I found my way into the strange world of the bar…Hence ‘Pink Tape’. Post covid, the eponymous heroine of this blog has faded out of recognition. It is a meaningless title to many. And I am struck how, in the 19 years since PT began, times have changed on so many fronts.

So I have wondered if, like me (and like its namesake), Pink Tape is getting a bit past it. Even the term ‘blog’ seems a bit quaint (I bet few readers remember when such things were called weblogs). Pink Tape the (we)blog doesn’t get much exercise these days, because the pace of life now our briefs arrive by email rather than neatly contained in tightly tied pink tape is just too much. And because, well, the older you get the more time you have to spend weighing up the risks and benefits and conducting a mental impact assessment before posting (rebelliously or otherwise)…that’s a mixture of wisdom, caution and the realisation that – inexplicably – the more senior you get the more power and authority you are wielding. ‘Ranting into the void’ is not so simple when people actually listen to what you have to say. With great power comes great responsibility. And so I have learnt to use my voice more thoughtfully. Impact is good. Unintended impact not always so.

And it does appear that some people are still listening to me blathering on (have you nothing better to do?) After a rare post a couple of weeks ago (the one about QLRs, not even especially interesting in the grand scheme of things) I’ve had about five people mention that they have read it and tell me they still read Pink Tape. When I responded with surprise to the last such comment I was told that everyone reads it. The stats remind me that this is flattery rather than fact, and that ‘everyone’ is quite a select few, but I guess I’m not quite rambling into a void, and I should probably try harder to say something worth reading.

My eldest beanpole came in for a chat as I was pondering this blog post. He is only slightly younger than Pink Tape (the blog) but remembered the pink tape strewn all about the house and garden. Even he asked me ‘mum, what was it forrrrrr?’. And so I told him about the different coloured tapes, about the neatly tied bundles that would arrive in the DX, with the words ‘BRIEF TO COUNSEL’ peeking out from under the pink cross and bow. I can visualise that pull of the tape end until the bow released with a satisfying thwunk, the ceremonial opening of the brief. The brief addressed to a proper barrister. The brief with my name on it. Pink tape was a surprisingly efficient document management tool, but it was also a sort of mystical ribbon that signified to me that – even as I felt like an outsider and an imposter – I was in fact an actual, proper barrister. And that there was something special about being one. Every day a new parcel an honour to receive – a little piece of a someone’s life inside, to be treated with care and respect. Each parcel containing a pink trussed mystery – something to investigate, to put together, to pull apart, to disentangle, a story to tell, a lie to uncover and a problem to solve.

It does make me a bit wistful when I think about how things were then. I mean, mostly I miss how I was then. I had more energy and a few more f*cks left to give, I suppose. I don’t especially miss having to do the daily trog from a far flung court back to chambers for the daily paper swap before travelling home again – the interminable wait for the fax machine to send your backsheet through to your solicitor after the hearing every day, trussing today’s brief back up neatly in pink tape ready for the DX, before retrieving the waiting brief for tomorrow from your pidge, ready for an evening of prep and mild panic. I don’t miss the inability to check anything once you got to court – the panic when you had no 10p pieces to put in the payphone in the advocates room so couldn’t call your solicitor to get emergency instructions (the panic when the payphone didn’t work anyway). I’m glad that we can all WhatsApp a mate and call in a phone a friend in the toilets these days. My back is pleased that we don’t have to carry six lever arch files full of papers across the country to court every day. I’m overjoyed that I no longer have to remember to print 3 copies of everything I might possibly need before I leave for court, and that I can research an unexpected point of law at court rather than being – frankly – stuffed unless I had the Red Book in my suitcase. I’m proud that our (my) understanding of domestic abuse and trauma (and vicarious trauma) has developed at last, whilst also being alarmed at how far it had to come and how far it still has to go.

I’m less overjoyed that counsel are no longer attended at court by a solicitor or outdoor clerk most of the time. And at the realisation that computers have somehow made the drafting of orders take much longer to prepare and use many more words. And at the overwhelming volume of emails, and the overwhelming volume of papers and digital evidence. And frankly, the overwhelming volume of ever more expectations. To prepare this, and draft that, all of which will make somebody else’s life easier. But never ours. No, “counsel will do it”. I am perhaps disillusioned that the march of scientific progress has brought the bar no more relief from drudgery than it did for the 50’s housewife. We can do amazing things with technology, but at the same time, the more of it we have the more that is demanded of us…an ever increasing proliferation of stuff for us to read and to write – and all of it to be done under ever greater time pressure in service of the gods of Efficiency and Timeliness.

So yes, the phrase ‘Pink Tape’ reminds me that an awful lot has changed during my working life, and the life of this blog, but not everything for the better. One thing that has never changed since before this barrister was one, is legal aid rates. The youngster coming up behind me, if they are willing to do family legal aid work at all, must do it at the same rates of pay that I received when I started back in 2002 (and the same rates that my more senior colleagues had been working at for some years before that). To be strictly accurate, they are being paid 90% of what young me was, due to the 10% across the board austerity cuts in 2011 (that 10% has never been restored). In fact, as the President of the Family Division retires next week around 30 years since he left the bar to become a judge, I can’t help but think about the fact that those junior colleagues will be paid no more than his contemporaries before his appointment. Because those rates haven’t changed at all, not even for inflation, for 30 years. Not a typo.

Those junior barristers, those modern me’s, may not need to be skilled tape-tiers or willing to be bundle pack horses, but my god they have to do a lot more for their money than we ever did. Tasks that weren’t a thing when the funding schemes were devised are expected to be done without payment, and just because we are dedicated to our job and our clients. The dwindling value of the fee and the privilege of working these cases is expected to be enough to motivate us. Enough to pay for our childcare and our mortgages, and to allow us to take time off (unpaid) to help us manage our vicarious trauma.

So as everything changes it also stays the same. In cold hard numbers the rates of pay are unchanged. But such is the effect of 30 years inflation, that the value of our pay and the value placed upon what we do is far lower than it was, and than we should expect. Our sense of duty at the bar is our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. And it has been exploited enough.