I went for the first of three compulsory dinners yesterday. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, it's EDU DINE, where trainee lawyers-to-be are supposed to rub shoulders with senior lawyers.

The opening speech by the managing partner of Duane Morris Asia was fantastic. The setting was fantastic also. The food however, was not.

Two blog worthy incidents:

Incident no 1:

Pupil at R n T shakes hand with partner of R n T at same table and asks "which firm are you from?"

Partner says: R n T! I thought you looked familiar.

Pupil: I can't believe I didn't recognise you!

Incident no 2:

R n T partner: And our firm gives out free Ministry of Sound passes.

Ang and partners partner: Our firm has Yakun Kaya Toast discount cards. 5 cents off each toast.

I woke up this morning to several missed calls, SMSes and MSN messages. Turns out there was a general, royal panic concerning this exercise called Criminal Case Procedure Management, where we were given a hypothetical situation and were told to prepare the relevant documents "as we thought fit" and hand them in.

I contemplated writing a letter to the effect that " Dear XXX, we regret to inform you that we will not be accepting instructions on this matter."

Alex suggested the following:

"Dear Mr. XXXX Thank you for employing our services. But as you know, I am in corporate, and we only serve listed CORPORATE persons with the capacity to pay our rates.

As for rape, your son did go to St. James Power Station, and that as far as I am concerned is the hangout of riffraff. By socialising with these afore-mentioned riffraff, I am afraid your son should submit to the consequences that follow.

This letter will cost you $6,420 (GST 7%) Please pay by cash or cheque made payable to XXXXXX."

The practical law course is regrettably not the most practical course around.

We have a ton of classes on plain language for lawyers, where they teach you to avoid using words like:

• implement - replace with carry out/ fulfil
• indicate - replace with show, tell, say.
• initiate - replace with begin

That's the equivalent of asking university graduates to peg their facility of the English language to primary 2 level.

Incidentally, the instruction manual says OMIT "herewith." And line 1 of the Plain English Drafting Exercise booklet reads " herewith are the papers for the above exercise."

Alex: and oh gawd, mediation tomorrow
mediation can suck my **#$*#@$*#@
i don't believe in compro fucking mise.

On a random friendster profile...

Me: CANNOT MAKE IT! Check this out "Me at Sakae JP taken by Dear. Do I look nice at Sakae restaurant?Cos I always took nice pic at Sakae"

Friend: Oh she sucks at drafting. She like copied and pasted a big chunk from "about me" to "who she wants to meet."
Very wrong to copy without paraphrasing.

Alex: "According to Kenneth, you've always been like that." "Yah, X has always been atas."

Me: "But I'm not! I'm just a regular, down to earth, guy next door!"

Alex: "X, you're a regular, down to earth guy-next-door. Next door to freaking One Raffles Quay."

Anonymous lawyer to me " You have to bother addressing clients by their real names in cross border work. You can't call them anything you want. Like there was this client called Knut, pronounced 'ca-noot'. It was bad enough that X was calling him nut. It was worse when Y insisted that he had mis-spelt his name in the email and then took it upon herself to be proactive and sent out a reply email addressing him as K-u-n-t. Can you imagine saying "That kunt sent us another email."

* * *

I laughed so hard when I heard that. I'll really miss the team when I go for the 5 month Practical Law Course at the courts.