Nearly set to go

Busy days of preparation

With a week to go until I depart Richmond to start my travels, I have my hands full getting things squared away. Rebecca and I discovered this week that we will be staying in the Hammersmith area of London, not far from Holland Park. My friend Anne in London says the flat (as Londoners call apartments) will be an easy commute to my work assignment on Fleet Street.

Ms. Heaton has let us know that a cab will be there to meet us at Heathrow, and this, for me, seems a great luxury.

While my research on the history of American law is lagging (I was hoping to learn more about when and how the American system diverged from the English before I started my trip), I have been able to review some materials on barristers' clerks. The first, by John Flood, was more of an essay of the difficulties he ran into as a student researcher attempting to study barristers' clerks. (Among these was the problem that the clerks drank rather more than he did, and expected him to drink with them. As a result, he said he often had difficulty discerning the substance of the research notes he would make on the tube home from the pubs.) The second, written more recently in 1999, also by Flood and Andy Boon, is a study of the reactions of members of the English legal profession to the advent of solicitor advocates in the 1990s.

I learned that barristers' clerks manage the barristers' schedules and arrange for substitutions of barristers within chambers when necessary. They also act as brokers between barristers and solicitors with respect to fee setting. It is not entirely clear to me whether this is still the case, but at least formerly, clerks received a portion of the barrister's fee, and therefore could be handsomely compensated for their work.

In addition to managing my trip preparations, I have also been busy working with the Jessup moot court team that I co-coach with a member of the local US Attorney's Office. For the past four weeks or so, the team has conducted oral argument practice thrice weekly for three or four hours at a stretch, in preparation for their Regional competition, which takes place the weekend of February 17. I am terribly proud of the students on my team, and regret that, because of my trip, I will be unable to see them during the competition.

The T. C. Williams School of Law Jessup Moot Court Team and coaches.

Here is a photo of the team with me (I'm not actually that short!) and co-coach, Stephen Miller of the Richmond United States Attorney's office. The photograph was taken by the team's excellent 3L coach, David Killion.*

Finally, this weekend I will be able to bid my students, friends, and family goodbye a little early, as I have a bon voyage cocktail party set for Saturday night. My co-workers at the court will join me for a farewell lunch on my last day at the office, next Thursday.

* "3L" is a short reference for a third-year law student.