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Is the attack on the disabled necessary and proportionate? The response should be a legal one.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of us know by now that welfare benefits is out-of-scope in #LASPO.  This concomitant loss of funding for legal aid work may mean that CABx and legal centres shutting in the context of a problematic finding. This is particularly ludicrous given that as many as a third of people claiming incapacity benefits who are declared fit-for-work later may go on to win appeals against the decision.

Nikki Neufeld, of the Pembrokeshire Citizens Advice Bureau, said that nationally, in new Employment and Support Allowance claims that 41% of all fit for work decisions have been appealed against and, of the appeals heard between December 2010 and November 2011, 32% were successful.

The Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is being replaced by the Personal Independence Payment (Pip) next year. Approximately two million DLA claimants are to be reassessed as part of the change—and as many as 500,000 will be denied the new benefit.  The Coalition Government hopes to cut at least 20 percent, almost £2.2 billion annually, off the bill.

There is now an overwhelming case file of perplexing examples of decisions made lawfully.  For example, Paul Mickleburgh, 53, has undergone a series of operations over the past 33 years, including four failed transplants, and has suffered 14 heart attacks. The father-of-three says he is the victim of changes which involve transferring tens of thousands of Scots claimants off incapacity benefit or severe disablement allowance and on to the new Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). He criticised the Government after being told to attend work-focused interviews and actively look for employment or face a cut in benefits.

In September 2010, Jan Morgan had a brain haemorrhage, which caused a severe stroke that left her cognitively and visually impaired, doubly incontinent and totally paralysed on her left side (in her own words). The prognosis was that she would need 24/7 care for the rest of my life. She was 50 and her youngest child was aged just 12 years. Astonishingly she “was politely informed that [her] benefit had been stopped as [her] medical certificate had expired.”  Also, an online petition has been raising the awareness of cutting of benefits opposing plans by the Department for Work and Pensions, which could lead to the blind and partially-sighted being denied existing benefits. One recipient said, “I have more than 36,000 signatures, which have come from disabled people and those from all walks of life. They include the chief executives of large organisations, to those who just care about welfare reforms being totally unjust.” Indeed, a CWMCARN man who was declared fit to work despite being registered blind and suffering from rheumatoid arthritis is appealing against the decision.

Even veterans are not safe, it seems. Officials have estimated that a total of 500,000 people will lose disability benefits under Mr Duncan Smith’s plan for a “more focussed” allowance called the Personal Independence Payment available only to those in “genuine need” of support. In a formal submission to the Department of Work and Pensions’ consultation on the reforms, the Royal British Legion apparently has warned that the criteria that could be applied to the new benefit could hit limbless ex-Servicemen especially hard.

The social media have been a Godsend for many disabled citizens. Sue Marsh has been relentlessly raising awareness of the issues she has been facing on her ‘Diary of a Benefit Scrounger’ blog, and Kaliya Franklin was recently nominated for the shortlist of the Orwell Prize 2012 for her blog “Benefit Scrounging Scum”. The impact of the Coalition, felt by many disabled citizens, is now finally being recognised in the wider media. For example, Jess Thom writes:

“Disabled people are right to feel like the hardest hit by the coalition’s relentless cuts. On the national level there’s the planned abolition of disability living allowance – a move designed to make 500,000 disabled people ineligible for basic support – or the health bill, which will privatise the NHS by the back door and make it harder for disabled people to access the services they need. And the brutal cuts continue at a local level affecting countless crucial frontline services.”

Any law in the UK has to be proportionate, and there is a European legal doctrine of proportionality which oversees this. The concerns about the disability benefit legislation, as regards human rights, are well documented (see for example a previous article on this blog).  The European doctrine of proportionality means that, ‘an official measure must not have any greater effect on private interests than is necessary for the attainment of its objective’:Konninlijke Scholton-Honig v Hoofproduktchap voor Akkerbouwprodukten [1978] ECR 1991, 2003.

Proportionality is probably not a ground for review separate from judicial review, but when a decision is challenged by judicial review the new approach required under the HRA was described by Lord Steyn in R (Daly) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2001] 2 AC 532, paragraphs 25 – 28.  Exactly how the courts should approach issues of proportionality was discussed by Lord Steyn in the case of R (Daly) v SSHD [2001] 2 WLR 1622, in which he said at paragraph 27:

The contours of the principle of proportionality are familiar. In de Freitas v Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Lands and Housing [1999] 1 AC 69 the Privy Council adopted a three stage test. Lord Clyde observed, at p 80, that in determining whether a limitation (by an act, rule or decision) is arbitrary or excessive the court should ask itself:

      “whether: (i) the legislative objective is sufficiently important to justify limiting a fundamental right; (ii) the measures designed to meet the legislative objective are rationally connected to it; and (iii) the means used to impair the right or freedom are no more than is necessary to accomplish the objective.”

The response to the attack on the disabled should not just be a moral one, then. The response should be a legal one.

The new websites of BPP and the Bar Standards Board are paradigms of excellent website design



In many ways, the website is likened to the ‘shop window’ of the organisation. It is the visible part of an organisation, which is vital for attracting new stakeholders. It also acts a pivotal part of the knowledge sharing mechanism. Furthermore, it can portray a strong brand, if it has a robust brand identity, which ensures loyalty amongst its audience.

The new websites of BPP and the Bar Standards Board are both worth looking at. BPP is one of the most important professional educational providers especially in law and business-related disciplines. The Bar Standards Board is pivotal in regulating the Barristers.

I like the BPP website very much as it is visually very attractive. In addition to presenting its formidable strength in professional subjects such as accountancy, banking and finance, law, leadership and personal development, I thought that the section on disability support for students was truly excellent. As a student who has studied the GDL at Waterloo, and the MBA at St Mary Axe, I am now in a third centre, Holborn. All there sites have treated me as a person who feels valued as part of a wider community, and have gone out of their way to support me reach the highest professional standards in my postgraduate studies. I can only compare this to my legal training to the College of Law, for my Masters of Law, which I felt was exceptional too. I can only compare this to Cambridge University where I did other undergraduate studies and my Ph.D., but the focus on teaching at BPP and the College of Law in my personal belief is much more focused and impressive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Likewise, I really like the new Bar Standards Board website. I have student enrolment with the SRA, but again the presentation of this website is immaculate. It effortlessly presents various issues such as the Code of Conduct, recent consultations (including the BCAT proposals), specialist regulatory requirements (including equality and diversity, both extremely important subjects to disabled individuals like me), and professional conduct for barristers. Its layout is uncluttered, and not overwhelming at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both @BPPLawSchool and @barstandards follow the @LegalAware on Twitter, and it’s therefore extremely rewarding to be part of a wider, positive, network.

Complete review of 2011 for the BPP Legal Awareness Society



It’s been a great first year for Legal Aware, the official blog of the BPP Legal Awareness Society (here it is on the official BPP Students website developed by Madelaine Power and Laila Heinonen).

February

On February 26 2011, I introduced my blog for the first time. I announced that blog would be centred around ten topics, and indeed I have largely stuck to this list throughout the year. Actually, I have expanded the list as my interests in the corporate legal news grew, and I started blogging on non-corporate topics, as my interest in pro bono welfare benefits developed. I have worked for five months in a law centre in London, in a post which was first advertised through the BPP Careers Newsletter.

March

Shortly, after announcing some meetings, I reviewed the plagued Rio Tinto and Riversdale transaction, one which had been plaguing Linklaters for months and which had an unfortunate conclusion. I invited people to join the brand new BPP Legal Awareness Society, which they did.  Maxinutrition was sold to GSK through Marcfarlanes in an interesting transaction, and I reported on the forthcoming implementation of the Bribery Act. Onto the legal landscape, it was becoming  increasingly recognised that professional legal services had to be run as businesses, and the nature of commercial law continued to interest me.

April

U.S. firms were fast adapting to the commercial opportunities of social media, and this was a theme to recur in the whole of 2011. For example, in May 2011, I reported on lessons in the UK industry for my social media strategy which had been very much made up on-the-hoof. In June 2011, Victoria Moffatt would later consider whether junior lawyers should participate in LinkedIn. By that stage, I was gaining a much clearer idea of what the BPP Legal Awareness Society was about, and that was to explain the relevance and critical importannce of law and regulation to shaping the competitive advantage of businesses. The regulation of the banking industry was beginning to bcome important as a theme, and I first brought up firewallsThe SRA spelt out 10 new principles in its Code of Conduct, and members of my Society discussed the use of ‘Second Life’ in law and legal education.

May

Slaughter & May LLP removed what they called a ‘clearly offensive advert’ widely reported in the blogosphere, including “Roll on Friday”. I was becoming very interested  in my MBA on how corporate social responsibility should pervade the business strategy in corporates, and I reported on a recent experience from India. Back in the real world, I was doing pro bono, and I wrote about a test in welfare benefits law which interested me – the cooking testMotor insurance was hitting the headlines, whilst international arbitration saw two bits of ‘big news': arbitration over nuclear power in Russia was becoming important and a new ‘Arbitration Ordinance’ was introduced. The effects of  the global financial crisis were becoming clearer, as law firms sought to find solace in Islamic Finance in diversification of their range of legal services. The effect of other issues, climate change, continued to be a source of legal work for the City,  RBS considered a international expansion strategy into China through the joint venture mechanismAmazon Inc continued to explore the intellectual property issues surrounding their “1-click patent”, and Google Inc meanwhile had their hands full with problems over AdWordsThe High Court also saw another interesting IP dispute over the name of Lotus in motor racing.

The impact of media law was beginning to become known as England discussed the need for a privacy law whilst free speech on the internet became under scrutiny and Charlotte Harris, a partner in Mischon de Reya LLP, tried to discuss superinjunctions and anonymised injunctions on BBC’s Question TimeLord Prescott indeed managed to achieve a win in the High Court over phone hacking. Finally, the impact of technology and the breaking of superinjunctions hit the limelight as ‘the Streisand Effect and that footballer’, and I dutifully did not break the superinjunction as I have student enrolment from the SRA.

June

“Roll on Friday” mooted the notion that I and various others at BPP were in fact suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome”, whilst I considered how my Society could help to overcome “the silo effect” in business and legal education. I moved the CSR debate onto a discussion of Bhopal in our Society’s meeting on CSR and international corporate strategy, and the general importance of marketing and CSR in corporate law’s “competitive advantage”.  The changing landscape of the world generally was further manifest in the ongoing discussion of the impact of the Digital Economy Act, now in the arena of whether it offended human rights.

Meanwhile, Ken Clarke presented his new legal aid and sentencing bill to parliament, and BAILLI realised it was having trouble securing fundingMicrosoft took a critical look at the role of entrepreneurshipCompass looked at ‘ethical banking’ in the banking regulatory reforms, and Steve Hynes wrote a brilliant letter to the Guardian on the impact of the legal aid cuts, whilst the Government produced its official response to its consultation on legal aid. Meanwhile, discrimination reared its ugly head, some would say quite literally, in a ‘battte of the cornrows‘ at the High Court. My passion for social law was intensifying at this point in this year, as I went to a brilliant meeting organised by the Islington Law Centre about what the legal aid cuts would mean. Again, I only found out about this meeting through the BPP Pro Bono Unit.

I revisited the subject of my LLM at the College of Law – cloud computing – in attending an interesting one-day conference on it at the HQ of Microsoft in which we discussed possible regulatory avenues for cloud computingFrank Jennings argued at this meeting that cloud computing offered a myriad of opportunities, particularly for cloud computing providers to “stand out”. The highlight of the month, and possibly the year, was our #tweetup organised by @ShireenSmith of @Azrights at “The Yorkshire Tea”, just a stone’s throw from the BPP Law School in Holborn. I was highly amused at the various antics of Magic Circle Minx, and this interview description made me laugh a lot.

July

As the training contract deadline was drawing to a close, I blogged about the online application form based on a meeting done by the BPP Careers Unit at Holborn. I was in the middle of studying leadership for my #MBA, so I wrote about Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” iconic speech.

I got easily bored, and discussed how Yogi Bear should be ‘legally aware’, and I even likened the training contract interview to the driving test the following month. I gave a well received presentation on the employment support allowance for my student society, whilst the full impact of the phone hacking at the ‘News of the World’ was becoming more widely known and what effect our statute law might have. This was the birth of the #Leveson inquiry which would be a dominant feature of recent months. Phone hacking was now a very active area of debate in the Houses of Commons, which was to be the case for the months which followed.

August

I became increasingly interested in the methods that legal recruiters use to select people for interview for corporate law firms. I had in my sights the ‘situational judgement test’ where applicants have to make a decision ‘what they would do’ in that particular corporate situation; I made my own version up, and so far over 100 people have taken it providing me with clear answers, surprisingly.

September

On 1 September 2011, Alex Aldridge published a thought-provoking article, “Disabled lawyers still face discrimination” in the Guardian.

I commented as follows:

I’d very much like to thank @AlexAldridgeUK for writing such a constructive and positive article on a topic, in my personal opinion, which has become somewhat of a ‘white elephant’ for law firms and legal education.

I agree that all of the firms mentioned in the article have really ‘meant it’, when it comes to widening access to disabled students in the legal profession. I am mentioned in Alex’s article above, and I tweet at @legalaware. The article generated much-needed debate, and I hope that it begins to forge a path for the future, where all stakeholders can bring their views to the table equally validly. For example, I have always found @SundeepBhatia2 very encouraging in supporting me. Sundeep is a Law Society Council member, and is extremely committed to the values of equality and diversity, in letter as well as in spirit.

Although I have now passed my LLM in international commercial law and I am about to commence my LPC in January 2011 here in London, I now run the BPP Legal Awareness Society during my MBA, a student-run society to promote the importance of law to business, and business to commercial lawyers (our news and educational videos are located at http://www.legal-aware.org). This time last year, however, I went to the http://www.open-to-you.com/ (OPEN 2011) event which was immaculately organised.

It was a great opportunity to meet face-to-face legal recruitment experts, other law students, and, most importantly, lawyers generally at Managing Associate or Partner level. I’ ll be strongly encouraging my friends at @BPPLawSchool and@BPPBusiness, where I hope to be increasingly involved in our disability strategy at a personal level. As I am physically disabled myself, I think such an event is wonderful for introducing law students to issues such as reasonable adjustments in legal recruitment, and ongoing training. There was a brilliant session on interview techniques which I loved.

I happen to believe that a much more ambitious debate needs to be had, however. Disability is not simply about law firms meeting future employees face-to-face once-a-year, which I dare suits meets requirements of all those concerned. We need a decent acknowledgement that disabled people aren’t there simply for marketing purposes; disabled citizens are potent members of society. and can indeed secure “competitive advantage” for law firms in a directly relevant area of law such as real-life application of the Equality Act 2010 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents).

Crucially, all disabled lawyers can exhibit remarkable skills in completely different areas of the entire range of corporate law specialities, such as share acquisitions or joint ventures, as indeed you’d find out if you were to attend the ‘OPEN 2012′ event. I believe that many disabled lawyers are also happy in high-street ‘social law’ in professional legal services firms offering specialist advice.

and

I couldn’t agree more with Tim’ s comment above: especially the need to ‘walk the walk’ as well as ‘talking the talk’ when it comes to inclusivity and diversity. This extends to all forms of legal recruitment, including careers fairs.

Tim is deaf as stated in his comment, and I have mildly impaired walking ability, as indeed also stated correctly in Alex’s article.

I feel intuitively that partners promoting disability in ‘top law firms’ (a term used in helenfcooke’s comment above), especially if they are not disabled themselves, could ‘do no harm’ ln listening extremely carefully to the views of people who live with disabilities.

This is, I suppose, what the people like me might call ‘face validity’ (cognitive neuropsychology was the subject of my own Ph.D., hence my somewhat late interest in psychometric tests for legal recruitment).

Ideally, I don’t feel it would be a bad thing if there were more disabled lawyers at Managing Associate or Partner level in these ‘top law firms’, anyway as I feel that there are few role models for disabled law students like me.

Furthermore, the proportion of disabled people in the general population is not altogether insignificant, so there is arguably no legitimate reason why disabled citizens should be underrepresented at senior level in such ‘top law firms’, or any law firm for that matter.

A new intake of students arrived at BPP University College. I hotfooted back from the party conference season to display my stall at Freshers Fair with Majid. During my conference, there were many interesting topics which I blogged on. Having already done pro bono work as a law student for several months by that stage, I attended a major event at the Labour Party Conference on the perils of the legal aid reforms. I concluded that the proposals did not constitute ‘justice for all‘. At some point during the year, probably inspired by two academic economists Prof Paul Krugman and Prof Joe Stiglitz, who both won the Nobel Prize in economics, that the Coalition policy was wrong and profoundly anti-Keynesian; I disagreed with Vince Cable’s interpretation of it in a blogpost I wrote on the “paradox of thrift“. I felt I had to tie in the notion of ‘economic rent’ and Ricardian economics in discussing bankers bonuses, however.

Later that month, I decided to make my own platform to help law students, particularly those with dyslexia and visual impairments, become good at the online verbal reasoning test; this is an obstacle for many law students getting even an interview for a training contract now. I wrote an introductory post on this here.

October

I became increasingly interest in how psychometric tests had managed to gain such an elevated status in legal recruitment; in fact, at one point, I reviewed the history of the situational judgement test, with a view to considering what the future holds.

On 14 October 2011, Alex Aldridge published an article in the Guardian entitled “Is the law degree an ass?”.

I commented as follows:

I really enjoyed attending this debate at UCL on Tuesday for two main reasons. Firstly, as a law student (about to study the BPP LPC in Holborn in January 2012, having successfully completed my GDL, LL.B.(Hons) and LL.M. as a mature student), I was interested to hear how academics answered the question “Do lawyers need to be scholars?’. This is particularly since I have received academic scholarships from three well-known institutions including Cambridge. Secondly, UCL is in fact where I did my own post-doc, and I have fond very memories of the place. I

I would like to thank the organisers @LexisNexis and UCL who took great care over the many delegates. I was able to sit near the front, due to my poor eyesight. I hope very much that @LexisNexis hold an event in the near future, with panel representatives including ‘real’ law students. I hope particularly @kevinpoulter will be involved as he is an experienced legal commentator who communicates well. I sat with fellow ‘legal tweeps’, @colmmu from the College of Law, and@legalacademia, a legal academic originally from Cardiff. It has been interesting for me (as @legalaware) to read the general feedback following the event, which converges on the notion that the scope for discussion about the issues was too limited, and drawn from people who were perhaps too senior. Notwithstanding these issues, I am very much looking forward to the outcome of the review to be conducted by the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR).

I have written a blogpost based on my own personal experience of this panel discussion on our ‘LegalAware’ website, the official website of the BPP Legal Awareness Society. On a positive note, Mr Bickerton explained his personal belief that the purpose of the degree is fundamentally not supposed to teach people how to be good at the law – his firm are rather looking for aptitude, interest, and a need to pursue law as a vocation. However, I found a bit alarming his relative disinterest as to what should be in the legal curriculum compared to the well-reasoned thoughts of the academics in the panel, in that the trainee recruitment of the Clifford Chance was of acceptable standards anyway. Ironically, it is perfectly possible for the Graduate Recruitment Team at Clifford Chance never to discover that you are a “scholar” if you do not meet their benchmark in their situational judgement test or verbal reasoning test. However you choose to define what a “scholar” is, most reasonable people would not define it as simply producing an arbitary mark in a psychometric test.

Personally, I found the views of Prof Richard Moorhead the most compelling. Prof Moorhead is at the University of Cardiff Law School (profile here). According to Prof Moorhead, lawyers ‘needed’ scholars, otherwise it would not be clear where the knowledge was coming from; scholars researched the key issues, and there is a key interdependence of lawyers and scholars – without scholarship, the advancement of knowledge would slow. The curriculum therefore needed to be exciting and innovating.

and

Interesting. I’ve had entirely positive experiences as a postgraduate student at BPP Law School, BPP Business School and College of Law doing my LLM, LLB(Hons) and MBA – but please bear in mind I’m bound to be happy at anything surviving a 2 month coma due in meningitis in 2007. i am also mindful of ‘advertising’ legal providers in this new ‘age’ of ‘expansion’ of legal services and legal education providers.

I did spend a lot of time at Cambridge, close to ten years in fact, as both an undergraduate and postgraduate student at Cambridge. I think @BaronessDeech is possibly being a bit tongue-in-cheek in her views about Cambridge, but I have always had a huge amount of respect for the jurisprudence FHS at Oxford.

I am now myself disabled, and I have passionate views about improving access for people like me who are visually impaired. Indeed, I have a chance to air them in the Comments section in a different article by @AlexAldridgeUK recently. I once had the enormous pleasure of meeting Prof Jim Harris. If you read his obituary, you’ll understand why,

Obituary in the Times

I didn’t study the Law Tripos at Cambridge – but I think i can understand where your impression of it as ‘stifling’ came from from my limited understanding of the organisational behaviour of faculties at Cambridge, @alienat. I think Cambridge suffers from a lot of very clever academics who don’t talk to each other when designing the Tripos, meaning that the Tripos is totally overloaded. As is usual in academic interests, they tend to be protective about representation of their own research interests in the undergraduate courses (and their examinations),
This was certainly my experience in an altogether different Tripos.

I would, however, be a bit disappointed if the Law Faculty (which does have an amazing research record, for example in criminology), were not able to input constructively into design of the law curriculum. They must however be extremely careful not to overload the curriculum (different from syllabus, by defintiion) with their suggestions, however.

Interestingly, since my comment was published, Clifford Chance have decided to discontinue their use of the Situational Judgement Test (they set exactly the same test in 2010 and 2011). I assume that this is not related to my comments above.

 

In the final three months of this year, I wrote more about psychometric testing (for example in the proposed BCAT and psychometric tests for training contract applications), human rights (for example the future of the Human Rights Act as discussed in a meeting of ALBA at the Inner Temple), and book reviews (for example on affect and legal education and happiness).

However, in these three months, I did become very interested in disability issues, accessibility and inclusivity.

 

October

The BPP Legal Awareness Society published its timetable for meetings to be held at the BPP Business School, St Mary Axe. We held all these meetings successfully in October – December 2011, including flotations, debt finance, international arbitration and joint ventures.

In October, I started blogging, in addition, for ‘Legal Cheek‘, an alternative blog look at the legal education and legal life in general. I wrote an article outlining my feeling that disability is the legal profession’s white elephant.

In this article, I argued that embracing disability was a good way of improving the quality of law schools.

All law schools deserve to be scrutinised very carefully in their response to the government white paper entitled, ‘Students at the heart of the system’, over the issue of whether disabled students are seriously disenfranchised. The formidable white paper, which was published in June, sets out proposals for a higher education sector which is sustainably funded, delivers a “better student experience”, and contributes fully to the efforts to increase social mobility. The ability of a disabled student to get a job is a massively significant factor in that individual’s social mobility; virtually all individuals do not aspire to sustain themselves through the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) itself. An adverse effect of the legal aid cuts may be to put off disabled applicants from applying for the DLA. Good law schools will wish to embrace theNational Student Survey, and participate in it to the full.

 

November

In November, I argued in an article for ‘Legal Cheek’ that the term ‘diversity’ is an unhelpful one, not least because it means different things to different people.  My conclusion was follows:

I believe that an useful first-step in advancing the diversity debate would be to phase out the word ‘diversity’ from the terminology, because, far from encouraging individual differences, clumping people together – inappropriately – inadvertently abolishes key individual differences.

Continuing the theme of disability, I developed the argument that law schools could take practical steps to make the wellbeing of disabled students much better:

The agenda for disabled law students under the government’s new framework is very much set by the law students. One way of getting involved is through the National Union of Students’ recently-launched petition calling for the establishment of a national advocacy service for disabled students (disabilities usually include long-term illnesses, mental-health conditions and specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia). In fact, if you’d like to set up your own disabled students’ group, you can email them for advice:disabled@nus.org.uk.

Still, I also feel it is up to the individual learning provider to be pro-active in responding to what disabled law students aspire to. At the bare minimum, they can simply comply with the white paper. But learning providers which wish to add social value may wish to do more to understand what disabled students aspire to and are legally entitled to. Certainly, it would reflect well on them to do so.

Meanwhie, back on the LegalAware blog, I was becoming acutely aware that the overlap between law and politics was becoming much closer. The legal aid cuts agenda remained at the front of my mind:

‘Sound off for justice’ and ‘Justice for all’ maintain that their campaigns are not political. However, senior people I talk to in law centres in London come to a conclusion that it is not possible to divorce politics from legal aid funding. Poverty unfortunately is political, as the Shadow Attorney-General, Emily Thornberry MP, suggested yesterday on BBC’s ‘Any Questions’. It happens that access-to-justice could disproportionately affect people on the basis of their income, in that cases of access-to-justice could become much harder to obtain for poorer people for certain problems. With many law centres set to shut down altogether, the legal services for immigration, housing and asylum, and welfare benefits, look set to be affected. The question is whether the poor will suffer disproportionately. Rich people will possibly be able to afford superinjunctions as before, as the evidence that the top 1% of the population have been affected substantially by the recession is lacking. This top 1% includes some (at least) well-paid lawyers in London.

However, colleagues of mine found it hard to discuss the political issues in an open way, but the funding of legal aid had unfortunately become a political isssue.

Whatever – I personally think all legal practitioners should be given support, acknowledging that funds are limited. but funding bodies will have to prioritise unfortunately. In fact, a focus on funding may have the beneficial effect of providing better precision to all stakeholders in their strategy and core competences of their legal services, whatever sector they are in. However, fundamentally, I most agree with the observation that, at this late stage, arguing over a sense of entitlement is totally unhelpful. It is desperately important that we fight until the end for our common purpose in protecting legal aid. I would find it very hard to support law centres if they wished to campaign at the expense of CABx or other stakeholders, but they should think about how they differ from other stakeholders when applying for London Borough grants for community investment or structural upkeep, I feel.

 

December

By December, I had come to the conclusion that a more radical solution had to be developed to improve access to the legal profession

It’s my fundamental belief that people are written off far too early in England and Wales at present. We have an education system that seems to punish certain bright people who fail to get perfect grades at GCSE and A-level. It doesn’t help that students are forced to make very specialised educational choices for their 16-18 studies at an age where they may not be totally convinced about their career choices.

I feel that the education and assessment environment needs an overhaul to prevent recruiters from using arbitrary academic achievement to ‘sift’ candidates out of sheer laziness. Talented people are being deprived access to jobs in the legal profession. Instead, we should be encouraging people to learn how to learn for themselves, and know where to find relevant information.

To this end, I feel law firms should be able to hire people straight out of school, if they wish, but also to take advantage to a greater extent of the enormous breadth of experience from other spheres of life mature candidates might offer. Unfortunately, we’re not in a place where that sort of flexibility can happen.

What will the future hold? 2012 has now begun.

LegalAware Review of the Year 2011 – Part 3 (Oct – Dec), disability and inclusivity



In the final three months of this year, I wrote more about psychometric testing (for example in the proposed BCAT and psychometric tests for training contract applications), human rights (for example the future of the Human Rights Act as discussed in a meeting of ALBA at the Inner Temple), and book reviews (for example on affect and legal education and happiness).

However, in these three months, I did become very interested in disability issues, accessibility and inclusivity.

 

October

The BPP Legal Awareness Society published its timetable for meetings to be held at the BPP Business School, St Mary Axe. We held all these meetings successfully in October – December 2011, including flotations, debt finance, international arbitration and joint ventures.

In October, I started blogging, in addition, for ‘Legal Cheek‘, an alternative blog look at the legal education and legal life in general. I wrote an article outlining my feeling that disability is the legal profession’s white elephant.

In this article, I argued that embracing disability was a good way of improving the quality of law schools.

All law schools deserve to be scrutinised very carefully in their response to the government white paper entitled, ‘Students at the heart of the system’, over the issue of whether disabled students are seriously disenfranchised. The formidable white paper, which was published in June, sets out proposals for a higher education sector which is sustainably funded, delivers a “better student experience”, and contributes fully to the efforts to increase social mobility. The ability of a disabled student to get a job is a massively significant factor in that individual’s social mobility; virtually all individuals do not aspire to sustain themselves through the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) itself. An adverse effect of the legal aid cuts may be to put off disabled applicants from applying for the DLA. Good law schools will wish to embrace theNational Student Survey, and participate in it to the full.

 

November

In November, I argued in an article for ‘Legal Cheek’ that the term ‘diversity’ is an unhelpful one, not least because it means different things to different people.  My conclusion was follows:

I believe that an useful first-step in advancing the diversity debate would be to phase out the word ‘diversity’ from the terminology, because, far from encouraging individual differences, clumping people together – inappropriately – inadvertently abolishes key individual differences.

Continuing the theme of disability, I developed the argument that law schools could take practical steps to make the wellbeing of disabled students much better:

The agenda for disabled law students under the government’s new framework is very much set by the law students. One way of getting involved is through the National Union of Students’ recently-launched petition calling for the establishment of a national advocacy service for disabled students (disabilities usually include long-term illnesses, mental-health conditions and specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia). In fact, if you’d like to set up your own disabled students’ group, you can email them for advice:disabled@nus.org.uk.

Still, I also feel it is up to the individual learning provider to be pro-active in responding to what disabled law students aspire to. At the bare minimum, they can simply comply with the white paper. But learning providers which wish to add social value may wish to do more to understand what disabled students aspire to and are legally entitled to. Certainly, it would reflect well on them to do so.

Meanwhie, back on the LegalAware blog, I was becoming acutely aware that the overlap between law and politics was becoming much closer. The legal aid cuts agenda remained at the front of my mind:

‘Sound off for justice’ and ‘Justice for all’ maintain that their campaigns are not political. However, senior people I talk to in law centres in London come to a conclusion that it is not possible to divorce politics from legal aid funding. Poverty unfortunately is political, as the Shadow Attorney-General, Emily Thornberry MP, suggested yesterday on BBC’s ‘Any Questions’. It happens that access-to-justice could disproportionately affect people on the basis of their income, in that cases of access-to-justice could become much harder to obtain for poorer people for certain problems. With many law centres set to shut down altogether, the legal services for immigration, housing and asylum, and welfare benefits, look set to be affected. The question is whether the poor will suffer disproportionately. Rich people will possibly be able to afford superinjunctions as before, as the evidence that the top 1% of the population have been affected substantially by the recession is lacking. This top 1% includes some (at least) well-paid lawyers in London.

However, colleagues of mine found it hard to discuss the political issues in an open way, but the funding of legal aid had unfortunately become a political isssue.

Whatever – I personally think all legal practitioners should be given support, acknowledging that funds are limited. but funding bodies will have to prioritise unfortunately. In fact, a focus on funding may have the beneficial effect of providing better precision to all stakeholders in their strategy and core competences of their legal services, whatever sector they are in. However, fundamentally, I most agree with the observation that, at this late stage, arguing over a sense of entitlement is totally unhelpful. It is desperately important that we fight until the end for our common purpose in protecting legal aid. I would find it very hard to support law centres if they wished to campaign at the expense of CABx or other stakeholders, but they should think about how they differ from other stakeholders when applying for London Borough grants for community investment or structural upkeep, I feel.

 

December

By December, I had come to the conclusion that a more radical solution had to be developed to improve access to the legal profession

It’s my fundamental belief that people are written off far too early in England and Wales at present. We have an education system that seems to punish certain bright people who fail to get perfect grades at GCSE and A-level. It doesn’t help that students are forced to make very specialised educational choices for their 16-18 studies at an age where they may not be totally convinced about their career choices.

I feel that the education and assessment environment needs an overhaul to prevent recruiters from using arbitrary academic achievement to ‘sift’ candidates out of sheer laziness. Talented people are being deprived access to jobs in the legal profession. Instead, we should be encouraging people to learn how to learn for themselves, and know where to find relevant information.

To this end, I feel law firms should be able to hire people straight out of school, if they wish, but also to take advantage to a greater extent of the enormous breadth of experience from other spheres of life mature candidates might offer. Unfortunately, we’re not in a place where that sort of flexibility can happen.

What will the future hold? 2012 begins soon.

 

BPP Legal Awareness Society – arrangements from January 2012



Our meetings will be held at the BPP Law School in Holborn from January 2012.

The purpose of this Society will continue to promote the importance of law and regulation in the function of all businesses including corporates.

I hope you may continue to support our Society. Details of forthcoming meetings will be posted soon both here on this blog and the official site for BPP students here. They will cover, as usual, the range of traditional practice areas in international corporate law. The Society, run by BPP students, will continue to emphasise the critical importance of diversity, equality and inclusivity for disabled law students. We are proud to do so.

 

About the BPP Legal Awareness Society



 

 

 

 

 

 

I am still one of the most active current full-time students of BPP enrolled on a postgraduate course, but I just wanted to clear the air over this issue.  To prove it, I am expecting my MBA summative results in organisations and leadership and strategy, systems and operations, on Monday, so wish me luck!

‘Legal Recruit’ is an initiative resulting after discussions of students of the Legal Awareness Society. The Legal Awareness Society is a registered popular Society of BPP. The Twitter thread to be the official mouthpiece of this BPP Society. Its aim always has been through the social media to explain the links between business and law, and we indeed have a popular website which transcends any usual boundaries.

The Society has regular meetings in the City, at the BPP Business School, although any BPP student may attend. Bear in mind that we have students in accountancy, finance, business, law, tax and marketing – so it’s a fertile area for interdisciplinary analysis.

This Society has never received any funding from BPP. Carl Lygo, CEO of BPP, and Clare Tunstall, Student Support Officer, have between them offered funding at various stages; I feel the money would be better spent in other parts of BPP. We like our independence as students in the Society rather, in that all our views are independent of BPP. Save for being a Student Society entity within BPP, we are nothing to do with BPP or its part.

I am meticulous about not using any branding of BPP. I have no BPP branding on any of my videos, books or posts. It is at this point I would like to acknowledge that I have attempted to liaise with the social media unit at BPP who were very helpful in arriving at this draft of the terms and conditions of my LegalAware website albeit it is a student one only, please press here. I signpost these T+Cs in the huge box on my homepage, and indeed anybody who becomes a ‘member’ of my LegalAware website is deeemed to have read them.

Back to ‘Legal Recruit’. It became apparent to me, and Careers staff at BPP Business School, that it’s an enormous pity if law students, despite a II.1 and relevant work experience, perform suboptimally in the psychometric tests. There is in fact a disclaimer on the Legal Recruit website, which reads as follows. This has been the exact wording of the disclaimer since the website went live.

Commercial awareness is a hugely important competence for a trainee in any corporate law firm. You may like to follow legal news on the blog of the BPP Legal Awareness Society, and its Twitter thread. With over 2000 followers including barristers, solicitors, technology and business professionals, journalists and students, it’s a great way to meet legal #tweeps. Please note that LegalRecruit is not endorsed by BPP, and is entirely unaffiliated with any BPP learning.

I am passionate about disability rights and inclusivity. I want disabled law students to be at the heart of the system, which is why I have tried very hard to ensure that individuals with dyslexia or visual impairments are able to benefit from practice on these tests.

LegalAware podcast 1: Ataxia and welfare benefit cuts



Welcome to the first ever LegalAware podcast. I am sorry for the sound quality. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it’s recorded on a very busy Regents Park Road, which can be busier than the #m6. Secondly, I am still getting used to the #yeti microphone and Audacity. Notwithstanding these problem, Alan (@AlanROYGBIV) joins me for a explanation of the neurological condition of ataxia, which we both have, what Ataxia UK is, and how the welfare benefit cuts are a tragedy for society, including disabled citizens like us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Final podcast 1

 

 

 

 

Round my kitchen table – transcript of my @AlexAldridgeUK podcast with @kevinpoulter on disability (done by @legalacademia)



Transcribed by Gary Walters of www.StretLaw.com – Twitter: @legalacademia


transcript, (c) Gary Walters, 2011

I am hugely thankful to @legalacademia for producing this transcript of our podcast last Friday.

“Round my kitchen table podcast: having a face that fits” 08 September 2011

Chair:

Alex Aldridge (AA)

Guests: Head of BPP Law School’s Legal Awareness Society – Shibley (S)

Kevin Poulter, Employment lawyer at Bircham Dyson Bell (KP)

 

AA: Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of my round the kitchen table podcast, I’m Alex Aldridge, columnist from Guardian Law section and US correspondent of UK Legal blog ‘Above the Law’.

With me this week is Shibley (S) a law graduate who tweets at Legal Aware. Shibley has a doctorate from Cambridge University and is currently looking for a training contract.

Also we’ve got my regular guest Kevin Poulter an employment lawyer with corporate firm Bircham Dyson Bell.

Last week I wrote an article in the Guardian about lawyers with disabilities which was inspired by a conversation I had with Shibley who has a disability and so far Shibley has been unsuccessful in his hunt for a training contract.

Shibley, if you could tell us a little bit about that.

S: Yes, I have done around 50-60 application for a training contract, some have done more so I consider myself lucky.

AA: 50-60 applications?

S: In total, I have done around 10 this year because I’ve lost some interest.

AA: Just to recap, what stage exactly are you at of the qualification process?

S: Well, it’s complicated. Due to a 2 month coma at the end of 2007 – as a result of this I was wheelchair bound and did my GDL in March 2009.

AA: Where did you study those courses?

S: At BPP (Law school) then I switched to College of Law where I stuck doing my studies by Distance Learning. I graduated January this year with a commendation from the College of Law, once I have completed my MBA I’ve decided it is time to bite the bullet and do my training contract.

Transcribed by Gary Walters of www.StretLaw.com – Twitter: @legalacademiaAA: so tell us about those applications, how many interviews?

S: 2 interviews with Magic Circle firms, and they were very nice to me actually at the interviews.

AA: then you received rejections?

S: Yes! (laughter). I was glad to go (to the interviews) so at least I could explain where I was coming from

AA: But, what happened in those interviews? Where they wholly positive? Were there any negative elements at all?

S: Actually, they asked all the usual stuff, which I think they ask everyone now, to be honest. Questions about law, their firm, what interests in commercial law do you have, what have you done, what have you read in the news, but as long as your face fits, bingo! You’ve got your training contract.

KP: I was curious about how you got two interviews in Magic Circle firms I imagine is a long process, even getting to interview stage, so how are you affected? Are you affected anyway? By assessment days, by vocation schemes, by the test, by anything else that was put in front of you to get you to an interview? Because I know there are probably a lot of people out there who would really quite like an interview at a Magic Circle firm and they’re struggling as well. What have you had to go through?

S: Well, actually I have learnt this slowly but main thing is to tell them that you may need some special care, what they call ‘reasonable adjustments’. In other words you must liaise with them carefully, especially during psychometric test, or if you need print to be extra big like my case, you must tell them. Obviously they can’t make the necessary adjustments if they don’t know you have a problem. They did take it very seriously and there were no mistakes.

KP: But actually just in terms of getting those interviews…

AA: I suppose it doesn’t hurt the fact that you got a Ph.D. from Cambridge, they must like that. Are there any other tips? Because you’ve been quite successful in terms of getting interviews, two at magic circle firms, any tips?

S: Well I think the thing is not to think you can simply get the interviews. So you need to pay good attention to good careers service – they teach you some useful things. The firms’ websites do tell you how they expect you to act as well, which is also important.

AA: That’s interesting because when I was at law school, many years ago, there was a kind of arrogance amongst students towards the careers service – almost as if these people don’t know what they are talking about. You really value the advice you got from them?

S: Yes, also I take you back to this ‘face fits’ but actually understanding rejection is useful because it’s quite personal. Understanding rejection can be a good thing but also that you don’t fit their organisation’s culture is a good exercise.

AA: This face fitting thing – we had an interesting conversation offline. I wish we could have such an interesting one in front of the microphone, hopefully we can recreate that…but I think it is an important idea that your ‘face fits’ at a law firm.

KP: I think it is important because if you don’t fit in, then you won’t be happy there. And either you won’t be happy or the firm won’t be happy with you and ultimately you’ll end up going your separate ways. And I think that is why in many ways the process for applications, the training contracts is so laborious. Guess you got to get down from a thousand applications to ten training contracts. But, part of the process is getting to know you; the back schemes, at lot of it is the social time as much as it is time spent in the office. A lot of the back schemes spend time in the pub, karaoke, going out for lunches either as a group or in smaller groups.

AA: So basically you’re saying to get a training contract you’ve got to be a ‘certain’ type of person?

KP: No, I’m not. I think in certain firms there is an expectation, desire for you to be a certain type of person. You’ve already mentioned that in one of the Magic Circle firm interviews they wanted to know about your commercial awareness and the reasons why you wanted to become a commercial lawyer, it’s the same thing. Whether it is about being a personality in terms of your academic background, whether that be in terms of your interest in a particular subject area or particular sector. There’s no point in going for a job at a legal aid firm if you’re wanting to be doing higher level commercial transactions.

AA: OK, so put it this way, alright. Say you’re interested in high level commercial transactions and you’re massively intelligent, you hate karaoke, you hate going to the pub, you don’t really like hanging out with people, (laughter) well, not necessarily enjoy hanging out with people but you don’t enjoy hanging out with those other commercial lawyers, where do those people fit in corporate firms?

KP: I think, there’s (pauses) it’s difficult to say, the reality is people that do well are those that do well in the job but also they’re confident, they’re social around the office, they make the effort to get know people because that is ultimately where your work comes from. You have to be able to build up a community within the office, from my own experience anyway. This is what is important, relationship’s with your clients – if you have some sort of social problem then, depending on what sort of area you’re working in it may well be you’re not doing as well in the job as you could be doing. We talked again, offline, about Barristers (laughter) who are famously known for kind of working on their own. It can be a lonely job; they take instructions at the last minute they (Barristers) deal with paperwork whereas we (Solicitors) deal with people frequently and in fact a lot of academics are barristers and very rarely they transfer to become solicitors.

AA: When I worked briefly as a paralegal at a City law firm, I just didn’t fit in to that office culture, I find it hard to articulate now I think about it, it’s not that I don’t like people, I love people, but I just didn’t fit in to that ‘boyish’ culture, one of the lads, that’s never really been me. To put this to Shibley, you come from an academic background and you say that actually counts against you?

S: yes, definitely as you come across very academic and I’m proud to say I have a first class from Cambridge and my Ph.D. from there, I’m on my 8th degree. That does come across as an academic and can come across as a liability for them, in employment that is a concern.

AA: Why a liability?

S: Perhaps if you use mental shortcuts, someone who prefers working on his own, and is less easily employed…At Cambridge where I trained you really had to have very good social skills – what we call commercial intelligence so I think to label academics as poor communicators is not right as some are good, brilliant people. Also, the issue about socialising, some academics like socialising too and whilst I do not drink I’m happy to socialise, and I enjoy it and also to be fair the amount of socialising involved can be separated from the job.

KP: There’s a perception involved that having 8 degrees, your interest is purely academia. A perception that someone who has a disability noted on their training contract application that they will be more hard work, harder to deal with, it might be wrong, it might be unfair and similarly for me coming into the profession initially I came in with my training contract and it was only part way through my training contract that I came out (as being gay) as a result of that I accepted it, every knows, it’s fine there is no problem. Is it something you would put down on the form? No, because I don’t need any reasonable adjustments to make any difference as I could still do the job regardless, well, err, hopefully (laughter). But, the point is that it does come down to character and personality and it’s about perception. Your perception of the environment you’re going into as a lawyer, you’re applying for new jobs and have to do your homework to make sure that is a firm you will be happy in. (agreement in background) Equally, and quite rightly, the firm has to do its homework to make sure you fit in with its ethos, its ideology, its values and with everyone else that works there, because you have to get on with them. At least sufficiently to be able to have a working relationship.

AA: Sure, sure, just generally speaking, law firms in particular seem to be quite good places for gay people. They seemed to have made a good effort with their LGBT groups.

KP: Yeah, there are a lot of groups out there. It’s the same with lots of different diverse backgrounds, the black solicitors’ network does a fantastic job, it does it surveys I think annually now. The association of Muslim lawyers, Association of Disabled Solicitors, there are various others, and yet is it right they exist? I ask myself the same question when I got involved in establishing a gay employment network. Do we need a gay employment network? How far down the line do we go with this?

AA: Do you think we do?

KP: Well, obviously I do, otherwise I wouldn’t be involved with it (laughter). But I think it’s just giving people the opportunity to come to an environment where they’re comfortable but it’s also business opportunity and I think this is what is important. Yes, these things (groups) are set up to be supportive, yes they’re set up to be visible, but also it’s an excellent network for getting to know people, transferring of contacts, for getting work.

AA: There are of course, groups for disabled lawyers have you been in contact with any them?

S: Yes, lawyers with disabilities via the Law Society and I would like to pick up on a point made by Kevin regarding the social issue whether there should be groups or not, certain groups of society being ‘partitioned off’. I think it comes from Kevin in fact when he says that you can add value to your firm…how law firm brings value to society and commerce, is incredibly important to have a diverse background of lawyers within a firm for social value.

AA: We’re going to have to wrap this up, thanks to you both of you for joining me, and thanks for listening, and I’ll be back next week.

"Have you been Aldridged?"



After I had posted an article on the use of Twitter by lawyers, things were said and noted, and I deleted the ‘unhelpful’ article on Friday evening. The intention of this article was to explain why legal tweeting might or might not confer a ‘competitive advantage’ using “Porter’s 5 forces” theory developed at Harvard University, and that was it. Meanwhile, @charonqc published his article yesterday evening, entitled “Postcard from The Staterooms: #Alridgegate edition …. Have you been “Aldridged” and some other b*ll*cks“. This was in response to an article which attracted much attention amongst legal tweeps entitled, “Lawyers enjoying tweet taste of success” which emerged on Friday afternoon. I certainly do not believe that the generic subject of how lawyers, in training or otherwise, engage with Twitter is a “sacred cow“.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where we do all most definitely converge is our passion for education. In reply to @CharonQC’s question which is clearly not aimed at me, I can say that “I have been Alridged”, and in my case it was an entirely constructive experience. Last Friday, my first ever legal podcast came out, courtesy of @AlexAldridgeUK. I had a very rewarding and intelligent discussion of the many positives that law firms demonstrated in trying to embrace diversity in recruitment, and Kevin Poulter, a solicitor, social media enthusiast and columnist for ‘London Loves Business‘ (twitter account hereand website here), extended the scope of the discussion to include members of society, who are disabled, working in law firms.

I was invited along as the organiser of the BPP Legal Awareness Society (my twitter thread is here), which equally has a passion for enmeshing legal and business education. It just happens that I am disabled. The thread is continuously busy; we discussed the Final Independent Commission on Banking Report this morning which was published at 0615. My article, published at 0640, is here.

As others have given aspects concerning “the Aldridge article” considerable air time on Twitter already, I thought it only appropriate to give some airtime on my carefully arrived at thoughts about diversity, which I am happy to say have been recognised in a positive manner by @SundeepBhatia2. Sundeep is a Law Society Council member, and whom I respect enormously. His excellent podcast (no 193) with @charonqc can indeed be heard here. I would very much like to advance meaningful discussion about this, so a ‘realistic‘ picture emerges without any unhelpful intervention of recruitment consultants who are protecting their clients – their paying law firms.

A day in the life of LegalAware



I had a very relaxing weekend. Boy, did I deserve it. I completed my BPP MBA written assessments in strategy, systems and operations, which gives us the skills to deconstruct corporate strategy and the efficacy of operations management. I sat the written paper in Holborn over about 3 hours, in which I was invited to write about how corporate social responsibility could be incorporated in strategy, and to what extent it benefited all stakeholders, and the case study which invited me to look at the competitive advantage of Spotify. The leadership examination was enjoyable too. I was asked to submit on a case study of change management in the NHS, implementing knowledge management. This was a joy for me as I had read the NHS Innovation and Improvement guidelines carefully, and I knew exactly the evidence base for their recommendations including some excellent papers from the Harvard Business Review.

So, on Saturday, I went to Cachao in Regent’s Park Road, here in Primrose Hill, to listen to tracks on my iPad, including ‘Suddenly I see’ by KT Tunstall, a song which has especial significance for me as ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ is a film that I strongly associate with, and ‘I was glad’ because I remember this booming out when I was sitting in Westminster Abbey as a Queen’s Scholar of Westminster School. As a disabled guy, I find the Cachao building itself very pleasant, and I have no difficulty in getting around. I was in fact featured this week in an article by Alex Aldridge of the Guardian on disability, discrimination and the law.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There, Sue and John were working tirelessly, in an incredibly smart and efficient coffee shop. Sue prepared an amazing ‘special’ which was terriyaki salmon on a bed of fresh salad. The dressing was amazing, but I can’t place what oil Sue used in fact – was it sesame oil?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jenny also was there, albeit briefly – her toy shop directly next door is wonderful, especially if you have any toddlers whom you wish to spoil! I enjoyed reading a wonderful article on mental illness and leadership in the Financial Times by Christopher Caldwell (published Saturday), as well as an interesting article on the overproduction of barristers in the US (“overlawyered“) . I had a chance also to buy a copy of ‘Ecological Intelligence‘ which I glanced at, but I so much disagree with what Daniel Goleman has said, in parts, about emotional intelligence.

I will in fact be submitting a paper on the importance of cognitive and emotional interactions for management and leadership with my lecturer from BPP Business School (who also is a lecturer at Queen Mary and Westfield College Faculty of Business, of the University of London). This I feel is a glaring omission of Goleman’s construct, and my co-author has some excellent thoughts about how we may approach the paper. I will submit the paper to the Annual Review of Management around November, and I had the pleasure of running my theory past Prof Simon Baron-Cohen, my first ever proper supervisor during my decade at the University of Cambridge, last week during a busy time for me. Simon, at the University of Cambridge, advised me that possibly the only person who would disagree with my theory is Daniel Goleman, but hey, rock and roll! Simon has been acting professionally in advising my twitter friend and fellow Scot, Janis Sharp, mum of Gary McKinnon – Simon is an important world-expert in autism and the Asperger syndrome spectrum.

So, now, it’s business as usual. I am going to do the 500 pp proofs of my latest postgraduate textbook to be published on October 6th, and think in passing how brain-dead legal recruiters are. And I forgot – my 2 week holiday officially starts today, but I love my life anyway. I hope to listen to the Brandenburg Concertos again, a new purchase in my iPad2!

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