Peter Kneale Solicitor

A post by the Office Ninja; all views expressed are entirely her own and not that of the firm. This one covers both literature and film. When John Grisham published his first book, A Time to Kill, in 1988 he was working 60 or 70 hour weeks as a criminal and personal injury lawyer in Mississippi. He was inspired to write his first book after witnessing the testimony of a twelve-year old rape victim and wondering what would have happened if her father had set out to murder her attackers in revenge. He wrote before work and during lunchtimes and, after several rejections, A Time to Kill was published in the USA in 1988 and in the UK a year later. His second book, The Firm, set him on the path to global stardom, being made into a film with Tom Cruise. I'm doing Mitchell McDeere in a future post, but today is about the young protagonist in A Time to Kill. Jake Brigance is a 32 year old lawyer, happily married with a 4 year old daughter and a beautiful old house he is fixi...

Ranker at www.ranker.com have an on-going list of greatest TV lawyers . It's a live list, so you can keep on going onto the list and voting for your favourite TV lawyer. Topping their list this week is Harvey Specter. Suits as a series started in 2011, with season 6 currently screening on Dave and weekly at Amazon.co.uk for a price, so perhaps the fact that the handsome, witty and ever so debonair Harvey is topping the poll shouldn't be a surprise. TV audiences, especially internet users, are notoriously swayed by whatever is popular at the moment. He has the dab hand in witty comebacks, a bad-ass attitude and unsurprisingly good suits. And many a man wishes he could be Harvey. So, what's his power? Well, he knows people, for the most part. He knows that if he makes an offer, or refuses an offer the other side will do the most obvious thing, usually. He also knows when people are idiosyncratic enough to do the opposite. He knows who he can wind up (Louis Litt, ...

There's always a character in your past who influences you for good or ill; when I had my first child and was a stay at home Mum, I loved watching Ally McBeal . There was just something about her sweet, childlike demeanour, or the fact that she spent hours worrying about whether she would ever get a boyfriend/get married/have a child whilst at the same time being a lawyer at a high powered but eccentric firm in Boston. The show was created by David E Kelley, a famous name in legal TV work and the genius behind LA Law, The Practise and Boston Legal as well as Ally McBeal . He was asked to create a show that would keep women aged 18 to 34 on the channel after another show, Melrose Place, had finished. His original brief was to make it about business executives; he changed it to lawyers and...boom... Ally was born. As legal dramas go, Ally stands unique. It had a good cast of characters that were quirky individuals; some of them were downright strange! It had a backstory and pers...

Shakespeare knew a lot about life, and often captured the ideal of a thought in a speech, a sentence or sublimely using one word. He also knew a lot about human nature, and the fact that people often don't read the small print. Edward Alcock's Portia and Shylock from circa 1778 In "The Merchant of Venice" a young Venetian, Bassanio, needs a loan and asks his friend, Antonio, for a loan. Antonio is short on cash himself because all his money is tied up in shipping, so until that comes in he can't help. He goes to the local moneylender, Shylock, who doesn't actually like Antonio because of the nasty things he's said and done to him for being Jewish. Shylock agrees to the loan, but has a condition; the loan must be re-paid in 3 months time or he, Shylock, can have a pound weight of flesh off Antonio. Antonio, impatient for the cash, agrees because he knows his ship will come in, and he'll be safe. It doesn't take a fool to see the hole ...