“Hi Anthony,” read the email. “I am the coordinator of Law Week this year. I was hoping you may be available to act as MC at the Martin Place Legal Expo. I understand you performed this duty last year. The day will run very similarly.”
And, sure enough, scanning quickly through the email, it became apparent that – for my purposes at least – the day was to run in a very similar way to last year indeed. In the coordinator’s own words: “to act as MC” was “a duty” and I – like all the other lawyers who performed during Law Week (but unlike the police band, I’ll wager) – was being asked to perform for the public pro bono.
I had a better idea. I agreed to MC, but sought and obtained a list of the Law Week Expo stallholders and a map of their stalls. With autumnal sun gracing all of Sydney (save for Martin Place), I arrived a few hours early and went from stall to stall with my hand out.
“I’m here for the free stuff,” I said. “Who’s giving away the best loot?”
The NSW Police immediately took the bait.
“A Frisbee,” said the officer, flicking a synthetic disc in my face. “And, here, have some balloons. We got here early, blew up a hundred and put them all over the stalls.”
And sure enough, this year, every stall from the Aboriginal Legal Service to Legal Aid was decorated with blue and white balloons celebrating the NSW Police.
“Trust the police to overstep the mark,” one stallholder said to me, only half in jest, when I drew her attention to the balloons on her stall.
The Anti-Discrimination Board had the most colourful display.
“Your stall looks like Mardi Gras,” I said helping myself to a rainbow wristband.
“A lot of this stuff is actually left over from Mardi Gras,” they said.
“What will you do with the leftovers from Law Week?”
“Next year’s Mardi Gras.”
The AAT coughed up cupcakes, but breakfast, for the most part, was Mentos and Minties. The NSW Bar Association had a big bowl of snakes with a rubber mallet alongside.
“I see,” I said scooping out handfuls and smashing them dead one by one – and then stuffing the lot in my face, all at once.
It turns out the rubber mallet wasn’t a mallet. It was a gavel. And not for squashing snakes.
Carers NSW had counter-bells for paperweights on their desk. And they were mighty patient about having them incessantly rung. Sheriffs & Juries had the worst paperweights: rocks. And the worst sense of humour. The rocks were not free samples.
The best humoured were Disability Services. Offering lollies on the tray of a wheelchair, they seemed the only group to be having a genuinely good time.
Victims Access Line was, suitably I thought, dispensing stress balls. Fair Trading gave me a squishy red one in the shape of a convertible car – and it proved popular at home until my one year old bit a chunk out of it – giving rise to a stressful choking-hazard conversion.
Most innovative, from the Community Justice Centres, was a tape measure, in a plastic house, on a key ring, with a number for free mediation services … of course.
“But what is it for?”
“Collecting evidence perhaps? Measuring how close your neighbour parks to your car.”
They also had a pen that is hard to describe, but basically had a scroll rolled up inside the plastic. Open the scroll, and violà: the number for a mediation hotline!
I ended the day at Young Lawyers, but the goodies were lacking.
“Where’s your free stuff?” I asked.
“We’ve decided to stop spending our money on trinkets.”
“So, what’s the point of being here at Law Week?”
They gave me a booklet: How to Survive & Thrive in your first year of law – alas, too late to save me from the profession. With the police band winding up, it was time to MC. Setting aside my trinkets and reminders of law, I took to the stage.