We must end the scandalous treatment of young lawyers

Recently there has been some discussion about the unmentionable cost of pressure at work or at home that leads people in later professional life to develop alcohol dependency. The legal professions have long been convivial places '“ at the Bar there has always been a strong drinking culture in the social sense. We lead professionally isolated lives, accountable to nobody in terms of hours, the working day and our work practices '“ other than being on top of one's brief by the time that the case is called on, with all that that entails. We travel long distances, have early morning starts and late returns '“ we sit up late at night and we have early finishes '“ by 11 o'clock sometimes. A case listed for two weeks that you have spent all weekend working on becomes non-effective on Monday and there is then time on your hands that is only partly filled by a couple of outstanding advices and listening to an interview tape. So, when we are free we are sociable '“ we like each other, we understand each other and we like the fine things in life '“ like alcohol.

For the solicitors there always was something of a lunchtime drinking culture, although I suspect that that has changed. Certainly in the days of City booms there was a lot of client lunching and client dining and then Friday lunchtime drinking in the watering holes of the City, and evening boozing that would begin at about the time other people are thinking more in the line of a cup of tea than a bottle of Muscadet.

But then there are the casualties. Too much too young or too much too often '“ when things go wrong or we become lonely, plagued by self-doubt or isolated or our addiction to the adrenalin of the court room needs a stimulus to fill the gap.

I was always taught never to drink at lunchtime because fate would be such that the one day that the usher or co-defending counsel can detect the faint whiff of alcohol on the breath, the residue of perhaps even just the one glass, that is the day that wholly unrelated you make a mistake and it is attributed, however unfairly, to drink. Other professionals '“ surgeons, for example '“ don't drink before operating; neither, surely, should we before representing someone in court. But it does go on. Years ago I remember one particular silk who kept a bottle of wine in the robing room during a long trial and had a glass or two with his egg and chips at lunch.

That was then '“ but the problem is now, when alcohol becomes a dependency and an illness. As a profession we have tended historically to overlook it. There have been occasions when it is clear that counsel in the case is actually the worse for wear for drink. We do not have the support systems or indeed any system to deal with this. In a solicitors' practice, or in business, a fee earner plainly affected by drink would be sent home and it would become an HR matter and presumably a disciplinary matter. However, help would be available. At the Bar there is no such thing, apart from the friendly advice of one's peers. This needs to change. We are letting each other down when things go wrong.

False hope

And many things are going wrong before they have even started. It is becoming a depressing fact that there are too many young lawyers and not enough jobs or pupillages. Considering applications for pupillages and mini-pupillages makes eye-watering reading: they are all so clever, accomplished, keen, interesting. None of us would get a look in. And when you go to court and meet a paralegal, you realise that no longer are they some passing Antipodean who does not mind photocopying for 12 hours a day to earn some money before going off to 'do' Europe '“ they are now highly qualified graduates who have passed the LPC and are desperately trying to get a training contract. There are shadowing schemes with bright young things with indifferent degrees from remote new universities who have run up thousands of pounds in debt on a false dream of a glittering career.

I am all in favour of encouraging people to follow the dream '“ but there must be a level of realism in that there are only a few openings each year and competition is fierce. Fine then, if you know all of that, to decide to get heavily into debt in your attempt to succeed and I sincerely wish them luck and hope it works out.

But if law schools are just taking the money and leaving them at the end of the course with debt and diminishing prospects, then it seems all wrong to me. Don't we as a profession owe these bright, lovely, enthusiastic young people a bit of honesty '“ a bit of support? In the US, I read in the paper last week, some law school or other is being sued by disgruntled graduates who have no chance of a job and are now working in fast-food restaurants with six-figure debts from law school.

Nobody should be taking the money and running, nobody should be selling a false dream. We are bad at looking after people when things go wrong later in their career '“ but we are, I fear, appalling at looking after people whose career has not even begun.