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

Potty Mouth Solicitor Dispatched ... NSW Court of Appeal takes dim view of solicitor who laced his correspondence with disrespectful insults ... Insufficiently professional ... Arrived from Greece with only his underpants ... No contrition ... Anthony Kanaan files ... Read more >>

Politics Media Law Society


The End Of The Affair ... Lord Moloch’s bid for more Fox News fans … The Wall Street Journal rallies the MAGA base …Will the old rogue abandon his journalists? … Is “bawdy” the right word here? … The Deep State plumbs the depths … John and Stanley Roth’s generosity to loving causes ... Read on >> 

Free Newsletter
Justinian Columnists

Suing for defamation - it's such a good idea ...Federal Court of Australia ... Sydney barrister loses bid for extension of time to bring appeal over decision allowing Giles George to intervene to seek an equitable lien over costs ... Falling out between barrister and firm after successful defamation action ... No error or procedural unfairness ... From Stephen Murray at the Gazette of Law & Journalism ... Read more >> 

Blow the whistle

 

News snips ...


Major victory for the media as public interest defence established in large and lengthy defamation case brought by orthopaedic surgeon ... Al Muderis v Nine Network, Fairfax and The Age ... Good journalism wins the day ... More >> 

Justinian's Bloggers

Postcard from London ... Summertime - And the living' is easy ... Votes for 16-year olds ... Paralegal's theft by pen ... Spy helping British intelligence from his job at Border Force ... Super-injunction comes out of the shadows ... Feed them strawberries and cream ... Floyd Alexander-Hunt files from Blighty ... Read more >> 

"I've stopped six wars in the last - I'm averaging about a war a month. But the last three were very close together. India and Pakistan, and a lot of them. Congo was just and Rwanda was just done, but you probably know I won't go into it very much, because I don't know the final numbers yet. I don't know. Numerous people were killed, and I was dealing with two countries that we get along with very well, very different countries from certain standpoints. They've been fighting for 500 years, intermittently, and we solved that war. You probably saw it just came out over the wire, so we solved it ..."

President Donald Trump at a meeting in Scotland with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer ... July 28, 2025 ... Read more flatulence ... 


Justinian Featurettes

Home Duties ... The dumping of Attorney General Mark Dreyfus ... Behind the scenes ... Bastardry among the brothers ... Unfinished business ... Family law, privacy ... Considerable policy and legislative results ... Here's Michelle Rowland as AG ... What are her priors? ... Polly Peck reports from the Gallery ... Read more >> 


Justinian's archive

Abolish silks ... Sydney SC writes to the editor calling for abolition of the silk system ... Appointments are anachronistic ... It's not a matter of ability, only notability ... Secret blackballing ... "Corrupt" process ... Confessions from an insider who played the game ... From Justinian's Archive, October 24, 2002 ... Read more >> 


 

 

« Avenging Sir Joh | Main | Sometimes it pays to be under-estimated »
Tuesday
Feb042014

January at the bar 

No cheques, no work, too poor to travel ... Junior Junior gets through January - preceded by a ghastly Christmas ... The myth of trying to be conspicuous during the break 

Christmas ... the start of the worst time of the year at the bar.  

I go into the end-of-year celebrations knowing that there will be no work and no money for the next month, at least. 

Despite this I still spend too much money on Christmas presents for relatives I don't particularly like. 

I sat down to a Coles-Woolworths manufactured, pre-packaged, northern hemisphere inspired Christmas lunch, drank too much and then fell into a food coma for the rest of the day.

Among many of the season's pointless traditions is the Christmas cracker. 

Each year, I buy the most expensive ones I can find after the disappointment of the previous year.

It seems that every year less explosive stuff is being used in these items and what was once a satisfying "pop" is now a bit of a "poof".

If you are unlucky lucky enough to win, you get to (a) put on a tissue-paper crown with the joy of having to wear it for the duration of lunch; (b) you get to read out the same "Dad" joke you had last year; (c) you are then saddled with trying to look excited about the miniature sticky-tape dispenser you won. 

I slept through the New Year's fireworks, because the idea of loading barges with millions of dollars, driving them to the middle of Sydney Harbour and setting the cash alight, didn't make me feel particularly celebratory.

Junior Junior suggests reallocation some of the fireworks funds to skint barristers

I couldn't help thinking that a distribution of some of that firecracker money to skint barristers, waiting for the cheque to come in, would have been a more worthwhile purpose. 

Then January arrives and I am stuck at home because chambers has decided to do renovations.

I watch midday television, obsessively check emails for any sign of work and pray that over the break clients have not forgotten I exist.

There is an urban legend that if a junior junior makes himself or herself conspicuously obvious for the whole of the December-January period that there will be a miraculous urgent injunction.

All the more senior barristers will be away so the junior junior will have the opportunity to wake a judge, run a flawless injunction and save the day.

This urban legend keeps many a junior junior waiting expectantly for weeks on end. 

There is always disappointment.

So, why is January at the bar like a Christmas cracker?

It is always approached with expectation and invariable there is more poof than pop. 

References (2)

References allow you to track sources for this article, as well as articles that were written in response to this article.
  • Response
    "few"
  • Response
    Response: menstration
    January at the bar - Bloggers - Justinian: Australian legal magazine. News on lawyers and the law

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.