In the spirit of all things spooky this Halloween, Insights has listed some of the scariest (and sometimes irrational) fears for those of us working in law. Let us know what your Legal Halloween Horror is in the comments below!

 

 

This is a legal horror that indiscriminately strikes the young and old at any given moment – usually a critical one. Before your client meeting with the managing partner, before that big court hearing and – the worst of all – right before you’re due for a performance review. Unfortunately, waving a cross at your computer isn’t going to ward this one away, but the one thing that will is backing up everything, religiously.

 

 

This one is the lawyer’s version of showing up to school without your pants on, except the briefs are a brief and it’s most likely one that needs to be seen to immediately because it just so happened to fall to the bottom of a seemingly ever-growing pile. And by immediately, we mean last week. So this one is going to be a nightmare in the sense that your body is going to reach a frightening plane of consciousness after you consume the amount of caffeine you’re going to need to pull this one off in time.

 

 

Perhaps you’re here for your esoteric interest in how medieval law influences the jurisprudence of oranges. Perhaps you’re here because it was the only course left prior to renewing your practising certificate.  Either way you’re on your own. All you can hear is the echo of your own typing, and the single instant coffee you’re sipping solo in the CLE breaks. Well, at least you can be assured of your industry expertise.

 

So you’ve been up for 28 hours straight and you’re about to head in to court from your matter. You’ve planned ahead and there’s a freshly pressed suit hanging in your office just for situations like this. The worst is over, right? Wrong. There’s a price to pay for the number of coffees you had as the night dragged on, and it’s not just the obscene amount that the hipster café on the corner charges you for your humble medium flat white, it’s the pristine expanse of fabric that is the front of your shirt. The caffeine jitters will get you every time.

 

 

We lawyers are perfectionists and – let’s face it – sometimes melodramatic. Sometimes the lonely elective is the elective where you’ll make new friends, the computer crash is salvageable, the forgotten brief is actually simpler than you think and the coffee on your shirt is just a droplet, easily handled with some water and a hand-dryer. The point is, it’s important to see when the horrors aren’t really horrors at all.