Champerty

The word 'champerty' is when a person agrees to finance someone else's lawsuit in exchange for a portion of the judicial award. I came across this gem of a word when I was reading the newspaper on the ferry on the way home. The word jolted me back to final year of law in a subject called Professional Responsibility. That was then I first came across the word. Champerty and maintenace is still a crime in Hong Kong and people are still charged with it. However, in most states in Australia this crime was abolished years ago by legislation. Facinating.

It's moments like this when I start feeling nostalgic about the law. I've been following a probate case that started on Monday in Hong Kong. It's like a John Grisham novel about rich crazy people. Reading about in the paper is better than watching a TV drama. I'm thinking about seeing whether or not the case open to the public just so I can sit in and watch the lawyers who were witnesses to the partial will of the feng shui master being cross-examined.
Hang on a second... Court 30! Open court before Lam J. I wonder if it's first come first served? The case is running for eight weeks. I've got plenty of time to get my butt into gear and get up early on my day off.

So I was thinking about a probate case I had worked on during one of my slave years. They are very rare and a lawyer would probably die of starvation waiting for one of these babies to come around. It was about division of a sugar cane farming estate between six children and there was dispute amongst the adult children about whether to sell the property so that equal amounts could be distributed. We represented the estate and so we had to organise a meeting between all the kids and their legal representatives. I think we spent a couple of days holed up in a meeting room before it was finally settled. This flashback came about when I was marking my third poorly written essay this morning about why human beings are harming the earth. I got up and walked out of my office and declared to staff. "I'm going nuts!" I have to change this essay question. I've probably marked about 30 of the same essay in the last month.

I'm not sure if my frustrations have been settled by changing the essay question. I'm blogging about it now. Maybe I will feel better about not doing interesting legal related work tomorrow. Actually, I will feel better about not being mentally stimulated from my job on Sunday. I'll be playing dress-up the Berenstein bear cutouts with Grade Ones and Twos on Saturday.

BedArt by The V

"I rolled the blankets up into a ball and threw them against the wall and that's how they landed." - The V