Margaret has summoned me over to “finalise the risk assessment project.”  This is code for: find out whatever she has on Philip Carton. But before this can be arranged I have to endure several days of post Ladies’ Day harassment from him.

“What happened to you?” he demands. “We were expecting you to stay to the bitter end. It’s an Assistant’s duty.”

“I was ill,” I lie.

“Ill?!” he scoffs. “What was wrong with you?”

I have been thinking about this. “It was either food or alcohol poisoning,” I say. ”I was very sick in the toilets and I didn’t think you would want me vomiting over your clients.”

“In their circles,” he leers, “vomiting is considered essential for a good evening out. You should have stayed; we could have nursed you better.”

“I think your sort of medicine would probably have made me more nauseous.”

“Well,” he smirks. “You will have to try it to find out. Next time, no flaking out: if a client wants your company, give him your company. “

The way he says it, it’s just one step away from sounding like: “If a client wants your virginity give him your virginity”.  Whatever ammunition Margaret has, she cannot supply it quickly enough.

And, as if that weren’t bad enough, further proof (if proof were needed) that we will go to any lengths to keep our precious clients happy, the list of Vacation Placement students is circulated.

“So much for Nick Clegg’s grand proclamations!” sniffs Jane. “This looks like a who’s who of client spawn.”

Glancing down the names it appears to be a prerequisite for all prospective vacation placement students to have client “connections.”  The son of one, the daughter of another, the niece of another etc etc. So much for equality of internships.

“It’s nice to see that The Bribery Act is having no effect at all in CWS,” laughs Liz.

“Do you think this is bribery?!” gasps Alex.

“Of course it is: we give their appalling offspring summer jobs, they give us work. How is that not bribery?”

“But why would their offspring want to come here?”

“There aren’t any jobs in banking or stock broking,” Jane tells him, “So; they’ve all decided that the legal profession is a safer bet.”

Little do they know.  As usual, I am hit with the overwhelming desire to expose them to the true horrors of Assistant life:  the endless mind-numbing drudgery; the long tortuous hours and the slow steady erosion of self-worth…

But The Boss is taking a keen interest in this years’ intake.

“Do not stint in your efforts to make them feel welcome,” he tells us. “Some of them (ALL of them!) have connections which we need to cultivate.”

Frankly I’m a bit fed up with ‘cultivating’ people with connections; it’s like cultivating carnivorous plants: you never know when they might bite you.

“Why is the firm adopting such a nepotistic attitude?” asks Liz. “It’s anti-competitive; it gives them an unfair advantage and makes it hard for the rest of us to relate to them normally.”

“Yeah,” Jane agrees, “How are we supposed to do our jobs if we’re expected to bow and scrape to these spoilt little brats?”

“I’m not expecting you to bow and scrape,” he laughs.  “I don’t think you would be capable of that Jane; I am just asking you to be nice.”

I don’t think she’s capable of that either.

This is confirmed as we trail back to our desks. “I thought we’d hit an all time low with Hamish,” she grumbles, “But at least he won his place by good, honest brown-nosing.  He didn’t get Daddy to get him the job.”

“I’m afraid it’s the way of the world,” Alex sighs. “When I was their age, my father got me a summer job in the family jewellery business.”

“You have a family jewellery business!?” Liz’s eyes glitter with excitement, “You have never told us! Do you get a discount?!”

“No. We don’t have it anymore. They sold it when I was at Law School.  No one wanted to carry it on when my Uncle retired.”

“Oh my god!” she is beside herself. “You could have been knee-deep in diamonds by now, not stuck here counting documents!”

“Thanks for reminding me,” he sighs. “I went into law because I thought the jewellery business was dull!”

“Then you are the perfect choice to talk about wrong career choices,” Jane agrees.

He gets his chance the following day, when The Boss takes ownership of the little darlings.

“May I introduce you to Poppy and Will?” I find myself staring at two extras from “Made in Chelsea.”

“Hi,” they drawl.

“Hi,” I drawl back. “Nice to meet you, what brings you to CWS?”

They seem a bit confused by this because, of course the answer is:  their parents!

“Oh, er, well, I, like, er want a career in law,” says Will.

“Yeah,” nods Poppy.

“And my folks thought it would be good to get some work experience in The City,”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, you have come to the right place,” I agree. “You will certainly experience work in this department!”

“Helens right,” he smiles, “We all work hard, but we play hard too and we are very well rewarded.”

He might be. We had a wage freeze last year.

“Well, it would be nice to stop and chat to Helen,” he tells them, “But she has lots of things to be getting on with and we have an appointment at The Oxo Tower.”

The Oxo Tower! Another reason to resent them!

“What kind of ‘work experience’ is that?” I ask Jane.

“His kind,” she tells me. “If you think about that, most of his ‘work” consists of fat cat lunches and coffee meetings.  They will get a great experience of what it’s like to be a lazy arsed partner.”

“But they will have no idea of the grim reality of Assistant life.”

“Perhaps they don’t need to,” she laughs. “If The Boss thinks they can bring work in from their folks, they’ll probably be fast-tracked to partnership.”

This is a depressing truth.  Having “client contacts” is valued more highly any other attribute in a Law firm.  You might have the legal ability of an orangatan or business acumen of a baboon but you will still be promoted if you’re “in” with a client.  And now we are taking this to the next level and recruiting their off spring. Where will it end? Hiring their cleaners; sponsoring their pets?

Jane decides to tackle it head on. “I’ve had enough,” she tells me, “We work our backsides off and we don’t even get a Christmas card from them. It’s about time we took a stand against this corporate corruption.”

She begins with The Boss.

“How does your new recruitment policy fit with The Bribery Act?” she corners him.

“What Bribery Act?” As ever, his finger is on the pulse of legislation.

“The one which came into force last Friday.”

“Oh, that one,” he pretends he knows, but he doesn’t because he hasn’t been near a seminar/update or briefing note since 1987. “I don’t think it has any bearing on this.”

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t.”

Aha, that old solid piece of legal reasoning.

“But if you’re employing students to curry favour with their parents, surely that’s giving their family and inducement which designed to make them give you work.”

“Of course that’s the reason!” he roars. “Don’t tell me that that’s suddenly illegal?”

She pulls one of her serious, concerned faces. “Well, I wouldn’t bet against it……”

He frowns. “Why hasn’t anyone told me about this?”

“There have been several seminars and at least two bulletins on the subject.” Not to mention two whole partners meetings solely dedicated to finding clever ways around it, which he failed to attend.

“Well, anyway,” he huffs. “I fail to see how employing a couple of hard working students has any bearing on it; they are being paid the same wages as normal Vacation Students and they will be expected to do the same work.”

“Hmmmm,” she wrinkles her brow. “I don’t remember normal Vac Students being wined and dined in The Oxo Tower…..”

“That was just a one off.”

“I hope so,” she smirks, “I wouldn’t want The Serious Fraud Office to take an interest in our departmental affairs….”

“Then don’t concern yourself with things which don’t concern you!” he storms off down the corridor, not doubt to take it up with Personnel.

“Vile Caroline is going to have her work cut out for a while,” Jane says, with a knowing smile.

Having got a taste for it I have a feeling she may inundate HR with reports of alleged transgressions amongst the partnership.

“You can’t report them every time they take someone out to lunch,” I point out.

“Why not?” she laughs, “Better to be cautious, at least until start inviting us along….”

“Hell may freeze over first. “

“Then I shall be patient.”

“They invited Helen to Ladies Day,” Liz points out.

“She was a desperation guest,” she sniffs. “It’s not the same thing.”

A ‘desperation guest’; that just about sums up my social life.

“That may be true,” I tell her. “But, I don’t know what you’re complaining about. If I never get invited to a client do again, I shall die happy.”

“That’s not the attitude,,” she huffs. “If they never voluntarily invite us; we never get the chance to voluntarily have a miserable time.”

Sometimes the path of Jane’s logic would challenge Stephen Hawkins

But I don’t have time to worry about this because, finally, in the midst of this chaos, Margaret summons me over.   I find myself oddly nervous at the prospect.

“Take a seat.” She is wearing her black power suit with shoulder pads: she clearly means business. “Ok, first we should get this Risk Assessment thing out of the way.  I have gathered all the remaining information you should need, it’s all here in a file.  Take it with you, study it, review it, digest it, do whatever you need to do with it to complete your report.“ She hands me an enormous box full of files. “Now, let’s get onto the important stuff.”

I wonder what it is she has on him: Police reports?  Intelligence files?  My mind goes into overdrive at the possibilities.

She returns to her desk and opens the drawer.  Inside there is a purple envelope, which she extracts and hands to me.  “Of course, you never got this from me.”

I nod.

“It’s probably an enormous breach of Data Protection,” she goes one “And once your archiving recommendations are implemented I will never be able to reproduce it, so keep it safe.”

“I shall guard it with my life.” I may have to mean that literally: if Carlton gets wind of it, I am dead.

“Good. Now, I want to explain how it was produced, so open it and take a look.”

I unfasten the flap and peer inside.  There is a bundle of pages stapled together.  How exciting!  I pull it out as fast as I can and see that it is a list of names and contact details.  Oh…

Seeing my fallen expression she urges me to take a closer look.

I flip it over.  All the names are female. At the end, I spot Amelia.

“Are these his ex-Assistants?!” I gasp.

She nods. “Let’s call them The Castration Club.  It took me a while to root out the older ones; I traced some of them via The Law Society and I even contacted one or two, to check I had the right person.  A couple seem to have vanished – probably buried in a hole in Carlton’s basement!” she jokes. Then, seeing my concerned expression, adds:  “No, of course not, I’m sure they’ve just changed their names or fled the country – but, anyway, the list you have should have will be more than enough to cause Carlton a mild coronary, if he knows you have it.“

“How marvellous!”

“I know, it’s more shocking than even I appreciated.  Once I started looking back, I how many there had been.”

“How did you find them?”

“Invoices.   We have kept them all.   And although Carlton maybe a creep he’s an organised one; his bills are always accompanied by a record of al the time recorded on a matter and by whom.“

“This is astonishing.”

“No, the truly astonishing thing is that he has never had a male assistant in the whole time he has worked for my firm. And none of the female ones has lasted longer than two years.”

“Thank you so much, this is the best protection I could have.”

She waves a dismissive hand. “It won’t help if he picks a fight in the lift, but it will certainly be enough to reduce the chances of that happening. The next time he pushes his luck, take a copy and send it to him with a note saying that you will subpoena every single woman on that list in support of your harassment claim.  He won’t bother you any more.”

“I don’t know what to say…” I am, truly, lost for words.

“Don’t say anything,” she smiles. ”I never gave you that list and we never had this conversation. If anyone asks, we were discussing risk management issues.”

Well, in a manner of speaking, we were.