Ada Lovelace, confidence and the Digital Economy Bill
At Women's Question Time last week the first question was about the lack of statues commemorating the achievements of women. The audience struggled to think of any. Boudicca, okay. Queen Victoria, yes, although the female figures around her representing abstract virtues don't really count. Queen Caroline. Florence Nightingale. Umm ... we ground to ( Read more... )
The thing I find most severely annoying is when people make claims which are either out-of-date or just plain wrong, and do so in situations where people genuinely need sound advice. For example, claims such as "you have to have been working for your employer for 2 years before you can make a claim for unfair dismissal". Or the claim that it was illegal to throw a dead animal into a waste bin. The first, which I've seen made several times, was correct a very long time ago, the second, well, I don't know where that came from. But in the instances I saw, the people concerned were genuinely freaked out/worried by receiving the incorrect advice, so they struck me as potentially quite damaging claims to make - for this reason, my position tends to be, "if you don't actually know, zip it!".
The issues of misinterpretation you give are very interesting, and are sort of at the next level up in error-making. Certainly, being legally qualified doesn't seem to prevent those instances cropping up - see that nutty American dude trying to claim that Women's Studies at universities are discriminatory, blah blah, who is apparently legally qualified. I would suggest that at least some of these instances are more than a little wilful, though. Generally, I find these quite frustrating but perhaps more forgiveable, depending on the particulars.
Complete agreement with your first paragraph. I am highly suspicious about the supposed 'difficulty' of law, and I think it suits a lot of people in the legal profession to insist that it's all terribly difficult, when, as you say, what's most difficult/privileged is finding the time and mental space to absorb all the basics. It's always been one of my long-held beliefs that the average person does not ned to be a genius to understand basic legal principles, and helping people have a firmer idea of what their rights and responsibilities are is a really important aspect of social justice work. Still, indeed, application of principles is often the tricky bit and that *is* improved with practice, but I see no reason why non-lawyers automatically can't do those things.
There are always a few geniuses in every field, but it's unrealistic to expect everyone in the field to be like that. FWIW, I was a bit disappointed with our counsel's performance at trial recently - I just didn't think he was thorough enough, careful enough about the minor details (eg people's names) or firm enough about putting his questions. And he presumably earns several times what I do! So, y'know, everyone's a critic ;-)
Reply
Leave a comment