‘Upcoming Events’, read the sober newsletter of the Inner West Law Society, ‘Bedside Wills Dinner Seminar’.
I found myself shaking my head … a bedside will indeed.
I read on: “Our excellent speaker Peter Moran returns to address the Inner West Law Society again. A very recent Supreme Court case found against the solicitor for a bedside will … We anticipate the seminar will be popular.”
Popular? How many lawyers are into this? It’s bad enough that lawyers are still trying to make a buck drafting wills, let alone doing it by the bedside.
But then, I’ve done a few stupid things in my career.
I decided I would go to this ‘dinner seminar’. Anyone needing a caution about bedside wills must have also done a few stupid things in their time. Dinner with colleagues might be nice.
I arrived at the Balmain restaurant just as the 30 or so lawyers of the Inner West Law Society were sitting down to dinner. I found a vacant seat.
“I don’t mean to insult anyone here,” I said, plonking a bottle of wine on the table and myself on a chair. “But I figure anyone who drafts a bedside will must be crazy. It got me to thinking about all the stupid things I’ve done as a lawyer. So, I’m wondering … what’s the stupidest thing – as a lawyer – you’ve ever done?”
Silence.
“Well, let me kick things off,” I said as entrées arrived. “I used to act for a current affairs show … defamation litigation. In one matter, the parties were trying to reach agreement on the transcript of a hidden-camera recording. I palmed the task off to a grad, and the next thing I knew we’d agreed that the transcript included our TV crew laughing at the plaintiff’s toupee.”
“Did it help the plaintiff?” asked a lawyer, pouring me a glass of wine.
“The toupee didn’t,” I said. “But the record damages he won probably did.”
The room was hushed for the guest speaker. The main problem with a bedside will, I learned, is the risk of taking instructions, and then having the client die before you draft the will.
In most matters, this sort of situation would be a boon, providing an opportunity to complete the work in an orderly fashion – free from client harassment or interruption – and then being able to invoice, and be paid by, the hostage estate.
But if one had been charged with drafting the will for that estate, with duties owed to everyone including beneficiaries, both potential and actual, you had better have drafted something before the client croaks, or getting paid will be the least of your problems.
The speaker finished and mains were being served.
“My worst ever mistake,” I said, “was discovering some privileged documents to the other side. Years later, after I’d left the firm, I bumped into the lawyer who had taken over the matter. ‘We went to the High Court,’ he said. ‘Trying to claim back the privilege over your documents. Your little effort made law’.”
There was a titter. It turned into patter. No one else confessed any lawyerly stupidity.
I even tossed in a story about showing up in court to bankrupt someone after the bankruptcy notice had been served out of time. And yet still no one else had a mistake to offer up.
I was starting to think that the Inner West Law Society must have the least stupid lawyers in the world – until the guest speaker, Peter Moran, sat down to mingle. Moran acts for LawCover. He knows about all the dumb things lawyers do.
“I can offer two gems,” he said. “I know a lawyer who works not too far from here; he drafted a letter to his client setting out his proposed strategy and recommended settlement offer. And then accidentally posted the letter to the other side!”
“What happened?”
“They reached a remarkably quick settlement deal.”
“And the other one?”
“Another local lawyer,” he said. “Accidentally added a zero to a settlement offer.”
“Settled?”
“Remarkably quickly.”
And we wonder why our premiums are so high.