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 ln 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- Sl ble, by a different office of the same firm. (2) All existing folds are probably in the wrong P la 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 a °wn or back to front, and a useful variant is to put s °TOe pins or stapling clips at the bottom and the sides as well as the top. Carefully ensure that dates, reference nu mbers, addresses and other particulars to which People are likely to wish to refer are efficiently masked. ^ e 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 e tween different solicitors) are prepared in a form, or s 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 e 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 a 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 Su perflous and impertinent amendment. (3) Telephone hints: , ( a ) The grandeur of a tycoon can be calibrated by •} e number of consecutive women employed to tell his Vl ctims, after appropriate pauses, "Mr. X would like to s 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". (c) After a long run of such telephone assaults, one 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 •

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 100

^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 ° l ate. In many instances, the decision of these Tri-