I enjoyed my life as a commercial litigation lawyer.
Early in my career, I learned that the most important person in my working life was not the client, important as the client clearly was, nor the partner for whom I worked, although it was certainly important to have a good working relationship with him (in my experience it was always “him” in those days). No, the most important person in the office was the managing clerk.
I suspect I am right in saying that there is no such animal today. Today, with its all graduate entry into the profession and the obsession with paper qualifications often to the detriment of any real understanding of how to make things happen, law firms are full of paralegals, contract lawyers, trainees (not articled clerks) and other apparently brilliantly qualified individuals.
In the dim and distant past, there was a small and highly skilled group of people who really knew the nuts and bolts of the litigation process. They were not partners, nor solicitors, indeed in many cases, they had no formal qualifications at all but they were a mine of detailed information about the rules and how to interpret them. Most importantly in my case was their friendship with all and sundry “down at the Courts” as a result of which they appeared capable of arranging for summonses I had failed to have issued, to be issued without fuss and within the relevant time limits even if the resulting document was covered in rather more red stamps than I had hoped!
