One of the required elements of the BVC is legal research. You will be given a scenario by your over worked Pupil Master who has asked you to look into what will happen to their client. Its a case of dumping the file on your desk, leaving a note with a few questions on it, and then departing to the Caribbean for a month while they take a holiday, safe in the knowledge that you will discover everything necessary to get answer the problem.Therein lies the problem with being a Barrister. How can you ever get on when your Pupil Master is an over optimistic idiot. Surely they know that you are an inept bumbling fool that shouldn't be left in charge of making a cup of tea, let alone offering an opinion on a legal issue.
OK, so first thing to do is to check if anyone has a number for the hotel in the Caribbean. Second thing is to let the wave of panic run its course through your veins. Third is to cry.
Opening the file, you will find that the problem isn't quite as bad as you feared. Then you read a bit further, and discover its so bloody complicated and has so many twists and turns that it might just be time to call it a day. You have bluffed your way this far, but you have met your match, you cannot keep up the pretense any longer. You realise that admitting defeat is sometimes an honourable thing to do.
Maybe, just maybe, and you will have to humour me here, its worth making a start? Write something down and see what happens. It might flow, it might convince someone that you know what to do. Stop that manic laughing, give it a go.
Summarise the problem. This is relatively easy, but not for the feint hearted. You have to read the 50 pages of bumf, and summarise it in a logical and easy to follow way.
OK, Mr Smith is a guilty scumbag and got drunk and beat up his wife. She is in hospital with broken ribs, and he says she fell down the stairs. He was arrested, and in the car on the way to the cop shop he said to the copper, I will give you ten thousand quid to let me do a runner. Copper accepts a cheque and lets him out the door as they slow for the traffic lights. As Mr Smith runs round the corner, her trips over a dangerous Pit Bull dog and cracks his head open on the pavement. The policeman realises that he can't turn up at the cop shop without a prisoner, so he goes to the park and arrests a deaf dumb and blind tramp called Kevin. Kevin thinks he is being mugged, so punches the copper who falls backwards and impails himself on the railings outside the parks public convenience. Two man gainfully employed in using a cubicle in the toilets for a pupose not specified to the Parks Committee, hear the screams of the dying policeman and rush outside and nick his wallet. As they run off, one of them gets hit by the ambulance rushing to assist the Policeman and dies. The Policeman is taken to the hospital where he is placed in a bed alongside Mrs Smith.
OK, that was OK. See how it all comes together once you make a stab at it.
Right, what does the idiotic Pupil Master want me to do? Ah, investigate the dangerous dogs act, and advise on what can be done to clean up the park.
Go online, check the cost of a flight to anywhere that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the UK, and go. Just go. Get out of here, because sometimes the law is a bitch and a complicated one at that.
Does anyone ever actually pass Legal Research? Seriously, is it possible?
Bloody hell, I can't read the cost of the tickets through my tears.
12 comments:
Does this mean you got an outstanding Swizz?
I got a reasonable mark in mine but I water many pints of water out of my eyes trying to get there and 75% of the year failed so we found it really hard but well done to you.
Ginge,
Outstanding? Hah, the only outstanding I will be doing is standing out of the class with a dunces hat on my head.
I am currently sitting with my LR on my desk crying.
I don't even know if the dog had a collar on. That would have helped. Its all doing my head in. What colour was the dog? What was its name? Useless, absolutely useless.
Swizzle
Oh dear - i assumed you were being sarcastic :(
Well as I said LOADS of people fail. Its a much harder course than people give it credit for. LR is deffo the worst of it, and i am sure the next attempt will be better. At City it is ALL in the route.
Don't forget Swizz, you need to consider the HRA in relation to the LR too, not sure whether the dog has any rights under it though?
Ginge, me? Sarcastic? Hah!
BM, I have checked the UN Charter on the right of dogs to sniff lampposts and other dogs bottoms.
All I found was that it is illegal to discriminate against dogs because of the colour or ethnic origin.
Anyone know how to work out the ethnicity of a dog?
I have also found, and keep this secret because I doubt anyone else in my class has found it, there is nothing to prevent a dog licking its balls, or the balls of any other dog. But, there is legislation on what is permissible in Public Conveniences, and I have made a link between the 2.
I suspect that the 2 blokes in the toilets are guilty of something now. If you will pardon the expression, I think they will be going down for this.
Funny how it all starts to piece itself together when you make a start.
Swizzy
Sub-delegate/'mission command'. Just send your problem to one of those on-line legal advice websites. That's how I got through my Re A moot, although they were slightly disbelieving that I was just on my way down to the HL to save my conjoined twins.
OYB (On yer bike?) good plan.
I currently have my team of researchers on the phone to Battersea Dogs Home, the Dogs Trust, the 'Dogs are human too' Federation, Johnie Morris and the RSPCA.
Apparently, the dog is from outside the EEC, and despite having a dog eared pet passport is an alien. It was fleeing persecution and is seeking asylum.
A quick call to the Korean embassy to confirm that the dog had nearly had his chips and I have enough to be going on with now.
I love it when things begin to fall into place like this.
Swizzy,
ps Hope your conjoined twins are better now.
So there you have it, the dog's bollox of a Legal Research paper, but did you manage to find out if the dog was a legal beagle or an illegal beagle, or are you in the dog house, or should it be dog cottage in reference to the above male conveniences??? Crikey it's harder than it looks (ooh matron), this LR lark I mean.
PLR is soooooo like having a tooth pulled without anaesthetic - you have my sympathies, Swizz; I think I'd rather have a colonic than go through it ever again, but then again, were the golden snitch of pupillage to be ours this year, this is what we would be doing for our living, entombed in chambers basement, chained to a computer and browbeaten to DEATH by demanding pupil masters/mistresses - ooer, its all too kinky for WORDS!
Chin up, old friend; you can do it. I know you can.
Legal Research on the BVC must be one of the most boring modules!
Is there a caravan in here somewhere?
All College of Law LPC Reearch problems involved a caravan at some point (or so it seemed, maybe it was only two).
If there's a caravan, I can help though...
Asp, how about pretending the caravan is, in fact, a dog?!!
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