Daily Diary

Simple is as simple does

Posted 15/01/2007 by Legal Week

After festive excess, the new year is all about streamlining – be it post-Christmas waistlines, that oversized German partnership you’ve been meaning to trim or waxing the surfboard you bought during your mid-life crisis and never got round to using.

The Queen’s Counsel selection panel pre-empted this rather by cunningly dispatching the forms for its newly simplified silk selection process on 12 December – much to the chagrin of prospective applicants.

With responses originally due back by today (15 January), barristers inevitably found themselves unable to call on the assistance of judges for references as they were too busy gorging themselves silly on turkey, mince pies and the occasional (medicinal) sherry. So vociferous were applicants’ protests that the panel eventually relented and pushed the deadline back a fortnight to 29 January.

Clearly a simpler form isn’t much use if nobody bothers filling it out. However, The Diary wonders whether the whole exercise was a ruse to take the streamlining to its natural conclusion – and eliminate applicants from the process completely.

Now there’s a thought for next year.