Postcard from America

Dear Reader
I am writing this postcard, like all my postcards, on the last day of my holiday. I don't wish you were here. It's been good to get away on a legal aid free holiday to what the map calls "America, South East".
Mind you, we flew at legal aid rates: £69 return each to include basic car hire. True, by the time we'd upgraded the car, paid the airport tax and landing fee and accepted collision damage waiver (or was it "declined"? I have difficulties with understanding small print), the bill had climbed to about £250 a head, but it was still not bad to get 6000 miles away from the office, the partners and the clients.
I am sitting in a Florida forest at a picnic table thoughtfully provided by the authorities. The only sounds are of the wind swishing through the palm trees, the distant drumming of a watermill and the rasping noise of grasshoppers rubbing their legs together.
I like America for many reasons, one of which is its gentle (and probably unintentioned) eccentricity - even among lawyers.
While I have been here, we've seen the closing stages of the Mc Veigh trial (the so called Oklahoma bomber). You will have to wait a fortnight for more about the oddity of the US jury system.
For the moment, take small print. Those who have had the tedious task of watching me closely will know that I have kept a respectful distance from equines (or horses, if you are not reading small print) for thirty long years. I would have been quite content to keep it that way, but I was inveigled, coerced, browbeaten, call it what you will, into climbing onto one of those temperamental animals and riding up into the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. But before I did, I had to sign an agreement which was every bit as temperamental as the animal I was about to mount. Here is an extract from it describing the danger I was to be subjected to:
"The propensity of equines to behave in ways that may result in injury, harm or death to persons on or around them irrespective of their previous behaviour and characteristics; the unpredictability of an equine's reaction to such things as sounds, sudden movement, and unfamiliar objects, persons, or other animals; certain hazards such as surface and subsurface conditions; collisions with other equines or objects, the potential of a participant to act in a negligent manner that may contribute to injury to the participant, or others, such as failing to maintain control over the animal, or not acting within his or her ability; being bounced, jostled, or thrown about due to passage over varied, sometimes rough, terrain; the risk of falling off or being thrown from a horse; loss of control, collisions; latent or apparent defects or conditions in equipment, animals or property; weather conditions; contact with plants or animals; my own physical condition or my own acts or omissions; first aid, emergency treatment or other services rendered; consumption of food and drink."
The agreement also undertook to indemnify the company in respect of their legal fees should I decide to make a claim against them. It's easy to sign these documents when you are on holiday, especially when someone (who is not afraid of horses) is saying "come on, you are keeping us waiting".
So I signed (as I once did a car hire agreement written entirely in Greek), climbed onto the horse, clicked my tongue and found myself hurling up a mountain and clinging on for dear life. But then I thought of the small print, and decided that it would be a far better thing to bring the horse under control than to attempt to claim a million or so for a broken arm.
Galloping south into Georgia (metaphorically, having thankfully left the horse on the mountain side) we came across Athens. Not the Athens but Athens Georgia. This is an attractive university town with sidewalk cafes and a laid-back air.
We found an imposing building which proclaimed that it was the Athens County Court House. It was Sunday and it was closed, but a sign in the entrance hall (beside the usual exhortation not to bring weapons into the building) announced:
This building is treated with pesticides on the first Monday of the month. Interested citizens who wish to see the Manufacturers Safety Datasheets should contact....
I wonder how our own olfactorily challenged clients would react if we tried to do the same thing to them.

As we examined the notice, the disembodied voice of a security officer asked us through a loudspeaker on the wall what we were doing. He sounded unconvinced when we explained that we were lawyers from England. At the same time, two weary individuals emerged from the building bearing the trappings of all good lawyers these days: large boxes of files. They made their way across the street to a fine building with a giant plaque proclaiming that they were attorneys at law. Inevitably (we saw it elsewhere too) there was a sign in the window saying "no soliciting". That puts us in our place.
Lawyers are good at proclaiming themselves here. Nestling among the towering billboards enticing you to McDonalds or Holiday Inns which herald the approach to any town, you are likely to see at least one showing an honest attorney against a backdrop of the American Eagle or the Statue of Liberty. He is often described as a "lawyer of the people".
Think me strange but in any hotel room in the USA I will always avoid the Gideon bible and go straight for the Attorney section of the yellow pages. American lawyers have inspiring names and advertisements, such as Piccin & Musleh, Boglin Munns & Munns, Chalkley & Crooke; and Fine Farkash & Parlapiano (all real names). The advertisements almost invariably carry large colour photographs of cosy groups of partners with cheesy smiles - something which, if done in England, would surely reduce our intake of clients dramatically. For obvious reasons the attorneys love big negligence claims. It is less clear why so many of them wanted to act for bankrupts. They obviously know something we don't.

Must dash. I'm off to pose beneath a palm tree for my next Yellow Pages Advertisement. I think I shall declare myself to be an eccentric English lawyer specialising in the problems of rich Americans, particularly those who would like to pay me to consult with them under the Florida sun.

This article first appeared in Solicitors Journal in June 1997