Who wants to take silk?

Becoming a Queen's Counsel, aka "taking silk", is a career goal for most barristers. Few are chosen, but those few who do make it get to enjoy the title "leading counsel" and a huge uplift in their fees. Plus, the right to delegate most of the drudgery in their cases to their juniors.

I was a pupil barrister many years ago, and my pupil master (that is to say my mentor and teacher) appeared before the House of Lords in a complex case on the remoteness of damages in psychiatric cases. His "leader" was a silk who was clearly past it, a relentless chain-smoker who had delegated almost all the hard graft of assembling the case, and evidently had a very weak grasp of the subtleties of the law.

Frankly, I didn't undertsand the case either, but then I wasn't being paid £50,000 for a few days work. My only contribution to the whole affair was a handy knowledge of the Palace of Westminster – mainly where to find all the cafes and bars – since I had worked there as a research assistant a couple of years before. 

Anyway, we lost the case.

—-Alex