April fools

A cold March that cannot make its mind up about being spring is fairly dire, but April is the cruellest month. It has to be really, what with its curious habits of breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire and stirring dull roots with spring rain.

He was very poetic, that T S Eliot, and also bang on the button about the fourth month of the year even if he did not have the cessation of the first six in mind. It can be a very cruel month indeed '“ when pupil barristers emerge, blinking into the light, from the dark basements where they have sweated over particulars of claim and puzzled over law reports with the comforting knowledge that their work, if good, will be praised and if less than good will be massaged into a better shape by kindly supervisors.

And now, they are, lilacs notwithstanding, on their own in front of tribunals that may not be kind at all. Neither massage nor support are theirs '“ hopefully they will have friendly numbers to call when panic strikes, and more pertinently the horny rhinocerous skin all advocates need. Forget Oil of Olay and Dove moisturiser for men '“ the skin care needed is the method used by First World War soldiers: pee in your boots to soften the leather and harden the skin, so that you can at least limp home.

Coming unprepared

The training pupils get in their first six is exponentially better now than it was. No longer a matter of purchasing a bad suit, mimicking the supervisors' mannerisms and picking up tips at chambers' teas, but advocacy training through the Inns and in chambers, assessed tests, compulsory lectures and seminars, court visits with junior tenants. But even so there is nothing to prepare them for the sheer horror of a DJ in a bad mood, and a client in the cells who knows '“ exactly and precisely '“ that you have never been that close to a wicket gate before. The question: 'Done a lot of these cases before love?' slurred out through a mocking grin, from a customer who was well up on criminal procedure before the lawyer sent to represent him was born, takes a certain art to answer.

They cannot, of course, lie. They must learn to divert. Ideally, they must also learn the skill of selective deafness. They should not hear remarks about their looks, if comely, of either gender, or requests for just one ciggie, and how no one will notice if you slide it through the wicket gate. They must never, ever hear or respond to questions about how old they are. The answer is guaranteed to end in tears. And they must try to avoid the elemental mistakes which begin as small personal tragedies, and end as ripe myth: the tyro advocate appearing in the old Clerkenwell magistrates, who climbed into the dock thinking it was the lawyers' row; the young solicitor walking into Bow Street to be greeted by a friend shouting across the marbled hall: 'Goodness this must be your FIRST CASE!' (And I have, repeatedly, apologised for that but know that forgiveness will never come.) Or, bone crushingly horribly, the new barrister who appeared before a fearsome and legendary female Stipendiary magistrate on a Saturday. Assuming she was a solitary lay justice he lectured her upon her limited sentencing powers...