Legal Research

Temple of Low Men

By scott

“In the temple of love: shine like thunder; In the temple of love: cry like rain, In the temple of love: hear my calling, In the temple of love: hear my name …” Temple of Love - Sisters of Mercy

I bring you news from a strange world. Most of you know that I work for a Clifford Chance, a large corporate law firm, who mostly spend their time sorting out contracts between parties. In fact the parties were one of the things that attracted me to the job, so you can imagine my disappointment when I realised I’d got the wrong end of the stick when I heard that. Anyway, we do quite a bit of M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) work here, so I was interested to read that apparently, the Executive Committees of Inner Temple and Middle Temple have agreed to commission a feasibility study to investigate the potential benefits of merging their Libraries and creating a Joint Education and Advocacy Centre. Yeah, Library M&A.

Now, these Temple places are, I believe, where lawyers who couldn’t get into places like CC - and/or used to like dressing up as children - go to pray for another job (I saw a programme about it once, it all looked a bit like a grown up version of Harry Potter). These ‘Temples’ seem to involve ritual humiliation and being forced to dress up in musty old robes and wear ill-fitting wigs (like those school plays all over again). You also have to learn some law too and say ‘M’lord’ a lot. I’m not sure if those that work in the libraries have to do likewise or not. I haven’t heard of anything along those lines, although in further weirdness bunnies have been spotted there I have been told. See: I told you it was a strange place.

The Study will look at things such as which building gets the library, what to do with the stock - merge, consolidate, get rid of - and , of course, what to do with the gods and goddesses that work in said libraries, without whom the legal world would crumble and fall: - obviously. It will be summer before we get the results of the study. Of course this being the UK, it could be several years before we have a summer, so this process could take a while.

In the meantime I’d ask you to visit the site of the most regal Charon QC, whom I believe ‘M’lord’ knows about the goings on in such places and has a poll on his site (Well, if Britney can ask for one in her Hotel room, I don’t see why he can’t have one on his website) which asks the question: Is the proposal to merge the Inner Temple and Middle Temple libraries a good idea or a bad idea?

Full post as published by Information Overload on May 06, 2009 (boomark / email).