12 days

If you tear this wrapper off the second your SJ arrives on your desk and turn to this page you will now have 12 days to finish your Christmas shopping or (if you are like me) start it.

Leaving aside all the political correctness that surrounds the event, it is the one time in the year in this country when people universally celebrate by giving and receiving presents and generally being nice to each other whether they like it or not. The problem is that, despite all our best efforts, solicitors remain near the bottom of the league when it comes to considering who you most want to cuddle for Christmas, so the following are my suggestions of gifts exclusively for solicitors.

My first gift for fellow solicitors would be: a two-day weekend. How many of us have succeeded in not working at all every weekend in the last year? Not many I guess, and most will have worked some part of most weekends. Tell you what '“ Christmas is on a Sunday this year. Why not take both the Saturday and Sunday off. I know it is a silly suggestion, but try it.

Next would be self-finding files. I once thought that files disappeared only in the office that I worked in, but I have discovered that missing files (along with missing deeds, missing wills and even missing building society cheques) are an occupational hazard of all offices. The technology is already in place. There are gadgets that make keys answer to a whistle (we have a dog like that too) and mobile phones that tell you where they are. So, let us turn this into a true electronic age and let every file utter a friendly chime as soon as you call up its file number. It would save hours of angst and allow files to be retrieved from the most unusual hiding places.Some years ago I had a file that appeared simply to have vanished. I spent three days looking for it (something for which there was no time recording category on the system). Eventually it reappeared in the office at the bottom of a box piled high with Christmas decorations. No doubt it would have surfaced naturally the following Christmas, but, even at the pace that I work at, the file could not wait a full year before the next steps were taken in the transaction.

Screwing. Have you ever wanted to screw? Don't get excited. I mean the little metal objects with tapering spiral flanges that are used to attach things to things. I speak now directly to the handywomen and men who also read Solicitors Journal. You will know that there are two kinds of screws in the world '“ screws that require a flat-bladed screwdriver, and screws that have a little cross in the middle of them that require a Phillips screwdriver. Are you with me so far? There is an unwritten sub clause of the rules relating to chaos and the quantum theory that, however many screwdrivers you have at home of both types, you will never have the correct one for the screw you hold in your hand. As an early Christmas present I bought myself six of each and placed them in the cupboard under the stairs knowing that they would be there and ready to drive in whatever screw presented itself.

This very evening, to save myself from freezing to death before finishing this article, I attempted to mend an ancient electric fire. It needed a cross-head screwdriver, but was there one in sight? No there was not. So for this gift I would apply the same rule that I did some years ago to calculators when they became cheap. To get over the fact that calculators in our house disappear into the skirting boards, bury themselves under foundations and self destruct, I bought 30 of them and dotted them around the house. Now, most of the time, I can find a calculator. Please Santa, send all solicitors 30 matched pairs (one cross-head, one flat-blade) of screwdrivers. That will almost guarantee happiness next year to all (or both?) my DIY readers.

The perfect gift

To hell with partridges in pear trees, lords a-leaping, geese a-laying and all that cr*p. What solicitors will want more than anything else for Christmas is the perfect client. This is the client who thinks you are wonderful even if you are not, who never queries your bill and pays it without a murmur, who teases you gently when you are too legalistic and who equally gently corrects your interpretation of the law because before she decided to retire to a bungalow in Tydd Gote she was a professor of jurisprudence at a distinguished Oxford college. This client, having been screwed out of (oops sorry '“ thinking of DIY again) '“ correction '“ having paid a four-figure sum in fees, still gives you at Christmas a more expensive bottle of wine than you have ever owned before.

Close to the pleasure of the perfect client is the perfect loser. When we win our cases most of us face the fact that our battle, far from being over, has only just begun as every scrap of paper in our well-worn file is minutely examined and every second spent is challenged. How much nicer it would be, just occasionally, for a losing party to say: 'It's a fair cop guv, I'll pay your bill as drawn and an extra ten per cent because you have conducted the case so fairly.'

I suppose that is just as likely to happen in reality as it is for a portly man in a sledge drawn by flying reindeer to visit every house in the world and deposit gifts on the beds of sleeping children. That's me done for another year of tales from practice. Enjoy all these wonderful gifts I have bestowed upon you.

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