Hark! The herald angels seem to be in short supply in this time of Austerity, but at a Costabucks Coffee franchise near you "the Arrival of the Gingerbread Latte in the Red Refillable Cups" never the less heralds the advent of Christmas. Though quite how a Gingerbread Latte can be said to "arrive" (other than in a "Red Refillable Cup", obviously) I'm not quite sure. In fact, the whole "Red Refillable Cups" thing is something of a puzzle. Aren't all cups refillable, when you think about it? If they weren't refillable, they wouldn't be cups. They'd be a sort of hollow tube. And who would even dream of ordering their Gingerbread Latte in a hollow tube? All part of the timeless mystery of Christmas, no doubt.
Not the least amongst the mysteries of Christmas is, of course, our Christmas Competition. For this year, I was going to propose a challenge that involved drinking a Gingerbread Latte from a non refillable hollow tube, but have had to abandon this promising plan following the receipt of both Legal and Health and Safety advice. Instead, I thought I'd begin by sharing with you some wonderful suggestions for collective nouns for various professions that I stumbled across on the internet:
A menu of website designers
A wealth of bankers
A procrastination of consultants
A sack of football managers
A suspicion of customs officers
An evasion of spin doctors
A sample of statisticians
A plot of novelists
A gargle of dentists
A probability of risk analysts
A collapse of stock brokers
An error of journalists
And I was going to add, a coma of anaesthei.......no, wait, a coma of anaestheso......anaesthei.....but then I decided to leave it. Even my spell checker can't spell them.
But the collective nouns that stood out like a sore thumb were those for members of the legal profession. Whilst some of the others may gently mock a profession, the collective nouns for lawyers seem to this bear to be filled with hatred and rage. This is a family blog, I'm typing it before the 9 o'clock watershed, and so Mrs Bear wouldn't let me quote some of the more extreme ones, but amongst the gentler ones were "a cesspool of lawyers", "an avarice of barristers" and "an extortion of solicitors".
Ouch. It's almost as if we lawyers are not terribly popular out there. And, sometimes, that may be well deserved. Attend any gathering of mediators and you'll hear mediators competing to denigrate the lawyers who instruct them and you'll be regaled with tales of lawyers whose fees, or supposed desire for more fees, sabotaged settlements. Well, all I can say is that perhaps I've been unusually lucky, but, in all honesty, I don't see it when I'm asked to mediate. The lawyers who instruct me, to a (wo)man, seem to me to have no motivation other than to secure a deal that works for their client. And if that's at the expense of their own fees - and I guess it must be, every time - they put their clients' interests first, and their own second. Yes, really, truly, honestly. I've mediated over 500 cases, and I can think of only two where I felt that the lawyers' own interests were taking precedence over the interests of their client. Sure, that's two too many, but it's also less than 0.4% of the total. Which means that over 99.6% of the lawyers who I see in mediations are consummate professionals, putting their clients' interests above their own. To the solicitors and barristers who instruct me, I doff my cap. Or I would do, if bears had caps.
So, in this season of Peace on Earth and Goodwill Even to Lawyers, our 2012 Christmas competition is to suggest some more appropriate collective nouns either for lawyers generally, or specifically for the separate branches of the profession. Post your suggestions below, please. A bottle of bubbly for the best. Entries close at 5.00pm on 17th December 2012. Mrs Bear's decision is final. Please remember to add your email when posting (it won't be displayed to the public) so that we know where to send the bottle should you win!
And to all of you, lawyers and non lawyers, a Happy Christmas or, as the case may be, Happy Hannukah, Rohatsu, Diwali (belatedly!), Ashura (also belatedly!) Yule or Winterval (please select, amend or delete according to the religious or non religious persuasion of your choice).
Stupid Bear.
