In a seminar all weekend, and spinning at work for 2 days, I had to hear on a podcast that England's John Mortimer died this week. Rising to the very top of the legal profession, Mortimer is best known in the USA as the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, an aging barrister with long years in the trenches of criminal defense.
Despite a career as one of his country's leading lawyers, Mortimer made it clear he understood the life and travails of the small practitioner, including problem clients, problem office mates, problem opponents, incompetent or biased judges, and office politics.
As a Family Law lawyer, I particularly enjoyed one episode where Horace Rumpole was a little light in his case load when "crime was down", and felt compelled to take on a divorce [something that is happening more and more recently]. From a beginning lawyer, he learned divorces were now "no fault", something that they'd apparently snuck in on him when he was down at the Old Bailey a few decades before. Briefly stumbling over that minor error, Rumpole adroitly launched into the case without embarrassment.
He also learned that family law clients [unlike criminal defendants who never wanted to hear about their cases again] were free to wander about willy nilly, able to call their lawyers at will.
Horace was a lot like Greg House, M.D., but without the mean spirit, although he loved his glass of Claret nightly. Neither suffered fools kindly, but Horace manipulated and took advantage of them as he suffered through, always focused on the welfare of his clients.
Sitting on my shelf are aging VHS tapes of all the episodes of Rumpole. Every few years I take them down and watch a few episodes when I need a laugh. I need to convert them to digital so they won't be lost to me. Now if only someone had the foresight to put them on Blu-Ray. In the meantime, 13 hours of the short stories are available on Audible.com, unfortunately without Leo McKern as the voice of Rumpole, the only person who could have played the part.
