The Gazette 1974

Incommunicado

(With the compliments of the

Journal of the Law

Society of Scotland)

THE PRINCIPLES OF ENCLOSURE AND

OTHER COMMUNICATION HINTS

(1) Fold any document small enough to be easily

lost well inside larger documents where it may remain

safely concealed for years. Imagination can usefully be

applied to the selection of short urgent documents,

Particularly those of a financial character, to be linked

this way with long documents of a less urgent nature,

Unlikely to be processed for several weeks and preferably

dealt with by a different partner or, where pos-

ble, by a different office of the same firm.

(2) All existing folds are probably in the wrong

ce, so why not make some new ones?

(3) Pins, paper clips and staples should be so placed

a s

to ensure that no document can be read or signed

Without taking the whole assembly to bits.

(4) Concentration by the recipients can be further

Assisted by placing the occasional document upside

°wn or back to front, and a useful variant is to put

°TOe pins or stapling clips at the bottom and the sides

as well as the top. Carefully ensure that dates, reference

mbers, addresses and other particulars to which

People are likely to wish to refer are efficiently masked.

a l experts will plan at an even earlier stage the

Positioning of such particulars in the layout of their

documents where they are most likely to be obliterated

damped out of sight by all well-known punching,

""ng and binding systems.

(3) Additional employment can be generated for the

Profession by ensuring that all letters and memoranda

jwhether produced for use within the office or to pass

tween different solicitors) are prepared in a form, or

p!ced with the odd phrase, which will render them

^ s u i t ab le to be copied and passed to the clients con-

cerned, without editing and retyping.

(b) The profession have attained a high standard of

conomy in preparing drafts in very close spacing

^ t h o u t any wasteful margins or gaps between the

Paragraphs. Economy apart, this is a useful deterrent

Sainst superflous and impertinent amendment.

(7) The profession have attained a high standard

. economy in preparing drafts in very close spacing

Without any wasteful margins or gaps between the para-

graphs. Economy apart, this is a useful deterrent against

perflous and impertinent amendment.

(3) Telephone hints:

, (

) The grandeur of a tycoon can be calibrated by

•}

number of consecutive women employed to tell his

ctims, after appropriate pauses, "Mr. X would like to

Peak to you. Will you hold the line, please?" Three

is a good score, but additional points are conceded for

long waits, impressive background noises and heavy

breathing.

(b) Few solicitors can afford more than one such

acolyte, but we compensate for this by the length of

the pauses and the triumphant announcement that the

originator of the call has "gone out for a coffee".

can be bold enough or angry enough to say : "Don't

put any more calls through unless the caller is actuallv

on the line himself." If by any ill chance such an

instruction is remembered or observed, it is almost cer-

tain to lead to an immediate and ill-tempered confron-

tation with a client who is old, deaf, rich, obtuse or

important (or all of these things) whom one had in-

tended, but had forgotten, to exclude from such an

instruction.

(d) This admonition is not widely required, but it

is anti-social to cheat the post office of telephone reve-

nue by responding to a single request to phone a caller

back; make him phone at least four times to prove his

sincerity.

(e) Some saboteurs, foiled of immediate access,

attempt to leave, or even dictate, a message indicative

of the subject matter of the call in the illicit hope that

the respondent might just conceivably apply his mind

to the message, phone back with the relevant file handy,

or even read it up. The post office has, however, little

cause to worry—few respondents ever get such a mes-

sage. Fewer still react to it. If and when they return the

call, it is just: "They told me to phone you."

(f) Another fraud on the GPO revenue which evokes

an equally negative response is to exploit the economic

weakness of STD by ringing a distant office, and say-

ing : "Your reference is ABC, please tell whoever is deal-

ing with this that I will phone him in ten minutes and

that I want to ask him about Z." The damsel thus

approached will prove entirely uncomprehending and

obstructive, and will deploy every wile within her reper-

toire to induce you to "Hold on" while she conducts a

chatty, lengthy and fruitless canvas of all the depart-

ments and extension numbers she can think of, most of

which will prove to be disorientated, unconcerned,

hostile, or out for lunch.

(g) The imperious ring of the telephone and the

thought that it is consuming electricity and costing

money exert an inexplicable magic upon us all. A client

may have risen at dawn to travel hundreds of miles to

honour a long-prearranged appointment, yet his claim

to our attention can be disrupted or delayed by a talka-

tive hobo, reversing the charge and discoursing on

trivialities which he is too idle and inefficient to commit

to paper.

Administrative Law andthe Rights of the

Citizen

contributed and revised by the Editor

AH •

^oniinistrative Tribunals in modern times have become

jOore frequent and tend to effect to a greater extent

rights of the citizen in the modern Social Welfare

ate. In

many instances, the decision of these Tri-

bunals is the subject of appeal not to the Courts, but

to an Appeals Officer or to the Minister. The system

operative in the hearing of grievances on the part of

persons effected is not very encouraging to the pro-

fessional lawyer who normally operates through the

Courts supervised by an independent judiciary. This is

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