THE life of a lawyer is full of misfortunate and black comedy. The following events during my 40 years in practice do not cast our system of justice in a majestic light and are better suited as festive jokes in a Christmas cracker.

On my first day as a trainee solicitor, I was sent to attend an identification parade at a south London police station. My client was accused of assaulting a young woman in Greenwich Park. I explained that the purpose of the parade was to establish who had been present at the time and that a positive identification was made by touching the shoulder.

He took his place in the line. The young lady walked past him without a flicker of recognition. As she turned and walked back, he put his hand on her shoulder and said: “That’s the woman I assaulted.”

That was my introduction to mental capacity law. I returned to the office chastened. When my principal enquired how it had gone, I meekly suggested that he prepare for a guilty plea.

Other new lawyers fared worse. One pupil barrister was sent down to a south London county court for an afternoon listing. He was warned that the circuit judge before whom he was to appear was the rudest, most difficult judge in the whole of London.

On arriving at court, the barrister went to the robing room and put on his wig and gown. Thinking that he was speaking to his opposite number, and being aware that forewarned is forearmed, he asked the other barrister: “What can you tell me about Judge X, I hear he’s a real gent” — except that he used a word that sounds like “gent” of the same length.

What he did not realise was that the court was the only one in London that did not have a separate robing room for the judge, whom he was addressing. He received the frostiest of receptions in court five minutes later.

All this was almost 40 years ago. There was no tape recording of hearings and no complaints procedure if judges misbehaved. Quite a few held idiosyncratic views about the law, legal rules and conduct “in my court.” It was common to send young lawyers having their first hearing to a far-off court. That way, if misfortune ensued, their reputation would not be tarnished in their local courts.

An acquaintance was sent to a rural court in Essex for his first trial. He was understandably nervous, had not slept well and was overprepared. The other party’s witness gave evidence first. My friend resolved to say something in the first five minutes, to lance the build-up of nerves. In those days there were strict rules against hearsay and fortune shined on the young barrister when the witness immediately strayed into giving hearsay evidence.

Much fortified, he took his chance, stood up, and in his plummiest voice interjected with, “Y’onour, the witness’s evidence is clearly hearsay”; to which the judge replied: “I’ll have you know, young man, my court is extremely partial to hearsay. Now sit down and don’t address me again.” His courage evaporated.

In another case, a lay bench heard a bail application at the end of the day and then retired. The situation seemed increasingly hopeful when they had not returned after 30 minutes; surely at least one of them was persuaded. However, when the clerk went to check on their progress, the coat stand was empty; they had gone home. The clerk phoned the chairman of the bench, to remind her that it had been a bail application and that a decision was required. There was a lengthy pause, followed by a curt “no bail” and the sound of the telephone being slammed down.

The preciousness of the court’s time was often evident. One stipendiary magistrate locally disliked sitting after lunch. She would almost invariably advise a defendant at 2pm that trials were like surgery; even skilfully handled and with the best will in the world they could go wrong.

The court gave great credit for guilty pleas and was inclined to leniency. In the light of this indication and the strength of the prosecution case, the plea would be put again, and the defendant be out of the door two minutes later with nothing more than a conditional discharge; what in the north-east was known as a “Sunderland acquittal.”

Defendants did not always help themselves. In a rural prosecution for bestiality, a plummy prosecutor from London tried to spare the magistrates’ blushes by putting his questions in archaic legal language, each of which received the same reply from the illiterate farm worker, that he didn’t understand the question: “I put it to you that you had connection per anum with the pig,” “coitus,” “biblical relations,” “exposed your person” and so on. Eventually, the chair of the bench, a ruddy-faced farmer, lost his temper and shouted, ‘It’s perfectly simple. Did you f*** the pig,” to which the abashed defendant replied, “It backed on to me, Your Honour.”

A common problem for the defence was that under the pressure of cross-examination clients often felt the need to suddenly offer new explanations and to embellish their evidence. One defendant charged with supplying drugs faced the problem that a large amount of drugs paraphernalia had been found in his flat. When asked why he had one hundred cellophane wrappers, he went with: “I’m glad you asked that. My six-year-old daughter visits at weekends and often asks me to make a collage of a donkey with the wrappers, pipe cleaners and felt.”

The jury became animated and one of them stood up and said to the judge, “the jury would like to see the defendant make such a collage.” The judge’s reluctance to go down that road was undermined by his clerk reassuring him that the office had most of the materials and could get anything else from the stationers across the road.

Somewhat against his better judgement, the judge adjourned for lunch so that the defendant could produce his work of art. It was immediately clear that things had not gone well when the collage was passed up to the judge at 2pm. He first looked at it in portrait mode, then rotated it to landscape view, and then back to portrait, so abstract was the composition. The defendant received six years.

Defendants subject to a suspended sentence often felt bound to plead not guilty, even when the facts were unpropitious. One client was stopped by police with half a stolen Ford Escort in the back of his lorry. His defence was that someone must have placed it there when he stopped at a local shop to buy 20 Marlboro.

Occasionally, a famous witness would give evidence. In one social security tribunal appeal held in public, Bob Geldof generously appeared as a witness for a benefit claimant. His acquaintance won and the local authority appealed. That gave my colleague the opportunity to write a line he had always wanted to write: “I next heard from a Mister Robert Geldof, who I understand to be a popular musician.”

In another social security appeal, Mr Mohamed’s name was called out in the waiting area and the tribunal spent an hour considering his appeal. The tribunal members turned him down, primarily because of concerns about his veracity; he denied medical conditions he was recorded as having and offered others in their place as the cause of his disabilities. They were somewhat crestfallen to be told afterwards that they had failed to discern that it was a wholly different Mr Mohamed whose appeal they had heard.

I quickly specialised in mental health law, attending tribunals where I argued for citizens to be released from section. The cases could take an unusual turn. In my first case, the patient was released and the psychiatrist sectioned in his place; the latter was a recent refugee, and it was apparent when he gave evidence that he was psychotic.

In another case, where a patient’s primary delusion was said to be that his father was an MI6 agent, it emerged that his father was indeed such an agent. One patient detained for assessment was said to experience olfactory hallucinations in the form of burning smells, suggestive of epilepsy. However, he told me that he only had this problem when driving. Instead of the normal independent psychiatric report, I commissioned one from the AA, who diagnosed a worn clutch. That solved the problem.

The quality of the justice system and our judges have improved during my career. Most judges are competent, and relatively few are brusque or downright rude. The main problem today is that the system still has a pronounced class bias and many judges are out of touch with the pressures and demands faced by people from less privileged backgrounds.

Anselm Eldergill was a judge in the Court of Protection until 2024. He is a solicitor, an honorary professor of law and an academic associate at Doughty Street Chambers.