Library News

It can be grim in the firm's library ... Books are vanishing as are the Eureka moments ... Bring on the shampoo and the repartee ... Dorothy Says

I had cause to read a case today, one which predated online reporting.

As I was compelled to read a real book, I thought I would do so at the source, in the library. It offered nostalgia, novelty and obviated the need to talk to our grad, who bows when he walks into my office (sic).

At first, I couldn't find any law reports. The only books on the library shelves seemed to be out of date text books and crappy spiral bound copies of LexisNexis seminars someone attended in 2002.

"Don't we have any law reports?" I asked Brenda, our assistant librarian.

"They are on line," she said, in that doubtful way people have when they are speaking to someone they had thought had normal intelligence but have just realized is mentally challenged.

"No I mean real ones. You know. Books."

"Ah," she said, taking me to a compactus tucked around the corner. There, secreted away, were the leather bound volumes of our very picturesque reports.

I was horrified.

"They take up so much space," Brenda said.

Clearly, it is space that an accountant has realised could be much better devoted to computer screens.

What has the world come to?

Brenda and I were the only people in the library. My presence swelled the usual library population by roughly 100 percent.

Brenda and the library team send out weekly emails, hoping to lure someone down there.

Last May, when I was on my way to somewhere else, I stumbled across a library week morning tea.

So spindly was the attendance, so wan the ambience, and so hopeful but uneaten the offering of exotic cakes and sausage rolls, that I felt obliged to pretend it was my destination and stay for 20 minutes, making up the small circle of hungry graduates and attempting to fill the silence with witty repartee.

Repartee, witty or otherwise, is difficult (some would say technically impossible) when you are the only one talking.

Libraries were not always thus.

In the Jurassic period, when I was a girl, the library was abuzz with articled clerks researching advices and surreptitiously throwing paper planes.

There were moments of profound excitement too.

I was in the library late one night - about 9.30 - urgently researching what would happen if our client severed some rock anchors under its land which were holding up the neighbour's building.

The library was populated only by me and Neville, a fellow articled clerk whose intense love of the law seemed to preclude the use of shampoo.

Except for a far away vacuum cleaner and the occasional rustle of paper, the library was completely quiet.

The cases about rock anchors and underground trespass were very old and involved all sorts of scandal, and quite a lot about submerged public conveniences.

I was wandering contentedly through this world of subterranean derring-do when Neville suddenly roared "EUREKA".

This was a surprise. Gravity did, however, return me to my chair.

I expected to see Neville emerge, like Archimedes, from a bath. Instead, he peered around the cubicle wall.

"Did you ever have a difficult legal problem, which you always wondered about but could never find the answer to?" he asked.
 
"Um, yes, I suppose so," I said, hoping he did not ask for particulars. Sadly, my ruminations were devoted to more mundane matters - the sporadic nature of my sex life mostly.

"Well, I have always wondered why you can't cut down very old trees and ..."

He paused for dramatic effect, and pointed at the book he was waving in front of me: "I have just found the by-law which prohibits it."

His excitement was palpable.

He waited for my response, which I confess I was struggling to compose.

"Isn't that great?" he said at last.

He is now a celebrated town planning expert at Another Firm.

This incident, which has stayed with me for almost two decades, has always made me wonder about town planning lawyers.

I was reminded of Neville today, not just because of my visit to the library. As George and I bonded over our plan to hijack Big Bugger's legal work, George mentioned that Ivan has identified a gaping hole in our town planning expertise and that "we" are looking for a lateral recruit to fill it.

There is a strong rumour that Neville has received the call.

Lateral recruiting is the term given when one firm raids the partnership of a competitor firm for talent, instead of promoting its own.

It can sometimes backfire.

The recipient firm will sometimes discover that, unbeknownst to it, it had been lured into a game of "go fish", and the competitor was offloading its crappy cards.

Happy days.

Dorothy