As a practising barrister, I have
never eschewed the professional limelight, as good publicity is the oxygen of
life. In my glittering career spanning
many years, I have had my fair share of media attention, but with very mixed
reviews. The problem as I see it is that
the media have their own agenda, which doesn’t always chime with my own
expectations. They want an angle,
something sensational, and something to grab and hold the eye of the
beholder. I’m not suggesting a
deliberate distortion, more a massaging of the facts to make for ‘good press.’
Upon mature reflection, I suspect
the recipient of a full page “exposé” in the Sunday Times may well be
questioning the wisdom of that particular exercise in self promotion, as this
was the main thrust of the article. I
skim read it, so sadly I’ve already forgotten his name, but as I remember it,
this self styled legal ‘celebrity’ was a solicitor from oop north, a sort of
‘larger than life’ character with gold jewellery and sharp suits, photographed
with a large cigar stuck in his mouth, a ruse no doubt by the interviewer to
stop him droning on interminably about his brilliance.
Cutting to the ‘meat and
potatoes’ of the article, this solicitor was telling us, at some length, about
his divorce practice, the number of high profile clients he had represented,
all female, and the millions he had screwed out of their undeserving husbands.
As a divorce practitioner myself,
I cringe whenever I read this complete garbage. It’s true that in the recent past, a number of decisions mainly from the
House of Lords have shifted the balance towards the wife, some might say
unfairly, with the result that husbands have been obliged to hand over a
disproportionate amount of their wealth to their departing wives. Many of the old rules have changed. Short marriages are no longer an impediment,
and marital conduct is all but irrelevant. Wealth brought to the nuptial couch may still be a factor to be taken
into consideration, but the days of ‘ring fencing’ are long gone.
But these significant changes are
nothing to do with cigar chomping solicitors, however much they and the readers
of the Sunday Times would like us to believe it. They are more to do with a gradual sea change
in the approach adopted by the courts, which had historically favoured the
husband as the bread winner and the main, sometimes sole, earner.
I like to think that the courts
still strive to achieve fairness in the distribution of marital assets,
although in my considerable experience, what is fair to one warring party is
manifestly unfair to the other. As they
say, when love flies out the window, so does reason, and reaching an amicable
settlement is often a bridge too far. Hence the need for good advocates, cigar chomping or not.
There may be rare occasions when
the husband has had enough of the bitterness and acrimony stirred up during
these protracted proceedings, throws in the towel, and allows self promoting
advocates to trumpet their brilliance. But my experience tells me that in high
profile divorces, I am routinely pitted against able advocates representing the
interests of the other party, and case law constrains me from arguing the
unarguable.
Above all, the good advocate in
divorce proceedings should not be there to screw the other party, but to achieve
a fair result with the minimum of distress to both. Perhaps I’m just an old softie, in which case
I’ll live with the disappointment, and no more full page profiles for me.
At least the solicitor and I
share one thing in common. We both enjoy
a good cigar. However, for my part I
always remove the band before lighting up.
David Osborne is a successful barrister, voice actor, author, media personality and public performer. In 1991 he hit the headlines nationwide and made legal history when he delivered his final speech to the jury entirely in verse. For this tour de force he was dubbed the Barrister Bard. For more information please visit www.david-osborne.com
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