The Sad Tale of Mr Lawyer
By Xerxes Viray
Third Year Law with Business and Industrial Placement
Firstly, congratulations on getting into the Exeter Law School here in Cornwall! The Law with Business Programme is a rigorous course and should not be taken lightly. A lot of hard work is required to achieve the best success; though, as with many things in life, you only get out what you put in.
Secondly, the success starts with you and ends with you. You can miss lectures and seminars, and instead of detention for absence, you simply have peers messaging ‘bro, u coming to the lecture ?’.You have the faculty and wider academic services available, so be sure to make the most of it, despite any preconceived notions you have. Humility will be your friend in growth and development.
At this point, it's fair to say the Law Programme is not one you can necessarily cruise through, though I will explain why, despite all that, you made the right decision to read Law.
‘Anyone can be a Lawyer’
We begin the story with Mr Lawyer, who typically believes that the law is found in the statutes on the legislation website provided by His Majesty’s Government. In that case, he opens legislation.gov.uk and starts memorising the statutes. Then, if he faces a legal problem, he just needs to refer to the website to see which law applies and apply it to the facts at hand. Simple, right? Congratulations, Mr Lawyer, you can now practise law and start charging upwards of £350 an hour!
With his training wheels off, he gets his first client with a legal issue. He spends the first 15 minutes ranting about what happened, and he finally explains the problem.
HouseBuilders Ltd and I made an agreement over the phone regarding a block of flats we were supposed to build together. So, I went away to make plans, paid a bunch of consultants to value the property and do their market analysis, and it turned out we were set to make a fortune! But when I told HouseBuilders Ltd about the market analysis, they turned around and said they no longer wanted to do business with me and would be working with someone else!
Wow, that doesn’t seem right. Or does it? Mr Lawyer opens legislation.gov.uk but finds no legislation setting out the rules of conduct. Lost, he tells the client there is no legislation for this, unfortunately, turning him away. Acknowledging that this doesn’t seem right, he advises him to see another lawyer. Mr Lawyer, gutted about all the money he could have made, watches as his client walks away, £350 out of pocket, and says:
‘I thought as a lawyer there was more you could do.’
He is right because our law is not simply found in the statutes.
Still, Mr Lawyer is determined, in the pursuit of justice, to make things right for his client. Having gone to another lawyer, he fortunately did not speak negatively about the practice; his reputation remained intact despite what seemed like an embarrassing moment. So, he pauses his practice and does one of two things. Either he can give up, realising that the law isn’t for everyone, or, in his humility and curiosity, decide to take up law school to see what all the fuss is about.
Law beyond the Legislation[1]
He chooses the latter, and within the first few lectures and seminars, the mistake Mr Lawyer realised he had made was assuming the law exists only in legislation. However, as he and many students quickly discover, much of English law is not necessarily written in legislation but developed over centuries of judicial reasoning set out in legal cases.
Determined to find an answer for his old client and prove himself, he consults a few textbooks he was given in class to understand the law in that area. Although the textbooks explain the principles well, they are broad in scope. He still has questions about the point of law, and they are not necessarily at the level of detail he wants for his client, nor is he able to decide what to tell him. Relentlessly seeking clarity, Mr Lawyer meets with a lecturer to get answers. Whilst they were able to clarify some aspects of the law he was reading into, they couldn’t give him the answer he was looking for because the reality was that the answer he needed to give had to come from himself. After all, what use would it be for him to charge £350 an hour if other people were giving him the advice?
Disheartened, he goes away, finds relevant cases, spends a few hours reading the judgments, and realises that the case he had was not necessarily unique. He found an old case from the 1980s and realised the facts were extremely similar to his situation, and that a judge ruled, by analogy, in favour of his client. He drafted advice, being extremely concise yet detailed enough to persuade his old client. It was clear, persuasive and grounded in authority.
Mr Lawyer, This Was Only the Beginning
Unfortunately, Mr Lawyer became so busy with law school that he never had the chance to return to his former client. Time moved on, as it often does.
What he came to realise was that learning the law was only the first step of a much longer journey. Studying legal principles, reading cases, and developing the ability to reason through problems were merely the foundations of a legal career. Beyond that lie new challenges: professional training, fierce competition, and the pursuit of accreditation.
The sad tale of Mr Lawyer is therefore not really about failure. It is about the reality of the discipline you have chosen. The law demands humility, persistence, and intellectual rigour. But for those willing to embrace that challenge, it is also one of the most rewarding fields of study.
So yes, despite everything Mr Lawyer learned along the way, you did make the right decision to read law. In the end, success in this field, as in many others, comes down to the same simple truth:
You only ever get out what you put in.
[1] The following section is a story of fiction and any resemblance to real scenarios or legal principals is a coincidence. Do your own research and seek a professional for any legal advice.
