A few of my un-favourite things

However that would have been a bit too easy, so I imposed upon myself a rule that none of my un-favourite things could be any aspect of the Jackson reforms or the Mitchell judgment, which is just as well as we would have needed a special supplement to include all of those.

So a Merry Christmas to you all. As to the traditional greeting of Happy New Year, 2014 could not be worse than 2013 could it? Could it?

• Lists;
• Time recording;
• Billable hours;
• Case management systems;
• Insurers who have ten different offices dealing with the same case and pretend to be efficient;
• Speakers who just plug ?their product
• Legal publications that uncritically print the rubbish that they receive from PR Departments about some new venture opening 10,000 offices in 10 days in 10 million towns or whatever;
• PR departments;
• Associates’ News
• Salesmen who use my first name when they have never met me;
• Salesmen;
• Before-the-event insurers who only insure cases they will never have to pay out on;
• Third party capture, that is dodgy insurance companies conning injured people into not seeing a lawyer so that they can under-compensate them;
• Solicitors who ask for, and get, free information from me and can’t be bothered to say ?thank you;
• Job applicants who do not turn up for interview – three out of six last week;
• Phones that play music;
• Phones that say Press One etc;
• Train announcers;
• Privatisation;
• Wannabee lawyers who can’t be bothered passing the exams;
• People who call ?clients customers;
• Meaningless surveys – well, that’s all of them actually;
• The term stakeholder;
• The term consumer;
• LinkedIn;
• Solicitors who pay inducements, that is bribe clients to instruct them;
• Solicitors who don’t see ?their clients;
• Alternative business structures whose unique selling proposition is to criticise all other law firms, even though they are clearly motivated by money alone and are, by and large, anything but professional;
• Regulators who purport to support ABSs when they would be looking at intervention if it was a high street firm;
• Referral fees;
• The name Dacorum – it is Hemel Hempstead;
• Lunchtime kick offs;
• Getting booked celebrating ?a goal;
• The stock market;
• Casinos and gambling generally;
• The LBW law that you can’t be out to a ball pitching outside leg-stump;
• PowerPoint
• People who moan by listing things that they don’t like.

Bah! Humbug! SJ