Search
This area does not yet contain any content.
Justinian News

Unread emails ... Family law barrister in Adelaide neglects to attend to emails ... Reminders to renew her ticket studiously ignored ... Unravelling chaos ... Trials invalidated ... Liability of Law Society and Conduct Commissioner ... Breach of statutory requirement ... Damages ... From our Team on the Torrens ... Read more >> 

Politics Media Law Society


An Australian Abroad ... An essay with pictures … Egypt and the Grand Museum … No end to the antiquities … Down the Nile on a dahabiya … Tombs and temples … Paris and industrial-scale tourism … The Yarts & Kulture ... Read on >> 

Free Newsletter
Justinian Columnists

Annihilation of the now ...Trump's campaign of destruction ... Fake emergencies ... Pointless and farcical executive orders ... Gangsterism ... Looting ... Corruption ... Shakedowns ... White rage ... Christian nationalism ... Roger Fitch unloads ... Read more >> 

Blow the whistle

 

News snips ...


Tasmanis's Lieutenant Guv (and CJ) Christopher Shenanigans is unlikely to decide the consitiutional impass ... The current guv'nor, former Circuit Court judge and family lawyer Barbara Baker returns to Guv House next week ... Labor hates the Greens and is unlikely to form a coalition government ... Another election looks likely as the numbers for both sides are brittle and unreliable ... However, Baker can ask the Labor leader to test his numbers. 

Justinian's Bloggers

Letter from London ... Weather report ... Starmer sinking ... Farage rising ... Fake law firm ... Fake cases ...  NHS employee cleans up with woke case for hurt feelings ... Floyd Alexander-Hunt files from Blighty ... Read more >> 

"In its self-image, Australia has changed from a nation of tough, resilient Anzacs to a snowflake society of victims. This can be seen in the rise of identity politics, cancel culture, trigger warnings, unconscious bias, workplace Broderickism, LGBTQIA+ pleading, colonisation impacts, hidden disabilities and welfare dependency. Hurt feelings, offensive words, micro-aggressions, workload stress and anxiety now form the basis of workers compensation claims."

Mark Latham MLC - a dissenting statement in a parliamentary report on proposed changes to workers compensation law ... May 2025 ... Read more flatulence ... 


Justinian Featurettes

Zeilgeist litigation ... Matt Collins KC on live-streaming of high-profile trials ... Social media nightmare ... Abuse of barristers ... Chilling emails ... Trials as a form of public entertainment ... Courts sleepwalking into a dangerous zone ... Framework needed to balance competing interests ... Paper delivered to Australian Lawyers Alliance Conference ... Read more >> 


Justinian's archive

Justice Jeff Shaw's bingle ... Supreme Court judge's drink-drive experience ... Cars damaged in narrow Sydney street ... Touch driving ... Missing blood sample ... Equality before the law may not apply to judges ... Judges behind the wheel ... From Justinian's Archive ... November 4, 2004 ... Read more >> 


 

 

« The nourishment of babes | Main | A glimpse of the future »
Monday
Jan212013

Back into it

Some barristers have to slink back to work because of their shameful antics at the end-of-year chamber's party ... Junior Junior is not one of them ... She stayed late at the party and now has something up her sleeve that may prove useful on a rainy night 

RETURNING to chambers after a few weeks of blissful inertia is a shock to the system.

It is a time of mixed feelings: relief that there is work to return to and dread that there is work to return to. 

Days that were earmarked for beach-going are now days that I must show up to court, looking like a drenched mess due to the hellish temperatures.

Ah summer! You suck.

For some, however, the return to work provides an even greater challenge. 

Numerous chambers are the repositories of particularly interesting characters, who have an allergic reaction to free alcohol and Christmas cheer. 

For these characters, the post-holiday return is akin to a walk of shame. 

They sneak in behind sunglasses and a new haircut hoping their colleagues have forgotten that they removed their trousers and jingled their bells during the head of chambers' speech.

There is no shortage of these antics at Christmas time.

By and large, I have found that people are unreasonably well behaved. They drink, they complain about the quality of the wine, they talk about their cases and politics and occasionally sing Christmas carols with words satirising colourful identities at the bar and on the bench. 

But, every so often there is a corker.

There was the junior junior who got intoxicated and was unable to walk. A senior took the poor sod home in a taxi, but they were both so hopelessly drunk that neither could remember where they lived.

Once they hit what the senior thought was the right suburb, the taxi ejected the junior junior who promptly vomited in the gutter then screamed at the fleeing vehicle and its passenger, "You're a paedophile".

Life thereafter was very difficult for that junior junior. 

Fortunately for me, I was well behaved at my chambers Christmas party.

I enjoyed sitting back and watching the antics. I ensured I was one of the last to leave so that I didn't miss out on any excitement. 

You never know what blackmail-able actions will occur in the last drunken moments of a shindig when the pressure is off and it all hangs out. 

So what happened? I'm keeping that one for a rainy night. 

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.
Member Account Required
You must have a member account on this website in order to post comments. Log in to your account to enable posting.