They are professionally meaningless, expensive and at times messy — but should the awards ceremonies be pensioned off?
When it comes to legal profession award ceremonies, Woody Allen’s remark in his classic 1977 film, Annie Hall, unavoidably leaps to mind.
“Awards!” he wails, as ex-girlfriend Annie screeches off in a sports car to catch her latest squeeze at the Grammys. “They do nothing but give out awards! I can’t believe it. Greatest fascist dictator — Adolf Hitler!”
One can only speculate at what the great bespectacled director would make of the legal profession and its addiction to handing out gongs to its own members.
This morning The Lawyer magazine — arguably the outfit initially responsible for the current glut of awards — trumpeted the results of its “European Awards”, having spent the last week appealing for more nominations for its headline “Lawyer Awards” gig. In addition to its blue riband event, the title also hosts a management awards.
Meanwhile, two days ago, the Legal Aid Practitioners Group and the Bar Council announced that nominations for the LALYs had opened. For the uninitiated, the LALYs are the “Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards”. The name is slightly misleading, as not just one lucky lawyer will pick up a trinket — there are no fewer than a dozen categories, almost suggesting that there’s life in the legal aid sector after all.
The LALYs are only the most recent legal profession award ceremony to tout for nominations. These days, there are almost more award ceremonies for lawyers than there are napkin rings in the Slaughter and May partners’ dining room.
The Lawyer‘s rival Legal Week is by no means outdone, stumping up with three back slapping events: the “British Legal Awards”, the “Legal Innovation Awards”, and the “African Legal Awards”.
Also piling in with at least one ceremony each are Legal Business magazine, the Chambers & Partners directory, the International Financial Law Review, LexisNexis Butterworths with its “Halsbury Legal Awards”, and the “Modern Law Awards” — organised by software manufactures Eclipse.
Even the Law Society of England and Wales has lumbered onto the bandwagon with its “Excellence Awards”, the highlight of which last year was the organisers giving their own chief executive a lifetime achievement gong.
Indeed, that prize for Des Hudson suggests that legal profession award ceremonies are finally on the brink of coming full circle and eating themselves.
Does anyone take the awards seriously? Should lawyers revolt and say enough is enough — we don’t need your garish glass trophies — and what’s more, we want to stop being ripped off for dinner?
Yes … and no.
The structure of more or less all these ceremonies — and the earlier list is by no means exhaustive — is formulaic (with the possible exception of the LALYs).
The organisers construct as many categories as they can imagine that will tease the egos of as many wealthy global law firms as possible.
Having lured say 10 nominations for each category, they plonk all on a short list and hit them with invitations to a gala ceremony — that’s a table of 10 for up to £5,600 (if you don’t want to be near the lavatories — oh, and the fee is exclusive of VAT). Yes, that’s £560 per head for rubber chicken and as many bread rolls as you can throw at the senior partner.
The evening itself will normally be headlined by something approaching a B-list comedian (or in the case of the ever-so-serious Law Society, a BBC newsreader). That poor sod will fight a losing battle to be heard beyond the introduction, dole out the awards as sharpish as humanly possible, grin through gritted teeth for photographs with the winners, and dash for the door as soon as the lights go up, stopping only to collect a large cheque.
The real point of the awards has nothing to do with which City firm wins the category of “Best project finance deal completed while team was standing on heads in a country with a dodgy human rights record”. Even five minutes after the trophy has been passed to a slightly sozzled head of department no-one will remember.
What the awards do is provide an opportunity for law firms and in-house legal departments to let a few chosen souls — often including non-qualified staff — off the lead for an evening. They get howlingly pissed, dance like lunatics, try to snog someone they shouldn’t — and its all on the firm’s shilling.
Legal awards are clearly professionally meaningless, no matter how many City law firms fill glass cabinets with ever-more tasteless trophies — not least because just about every City law firm has got a cabinet full of the damn things.
But if a couple of big nights out each year buck up the spirits of those who otherwise toil for long hours in fairly uninspired and soul destroying occupations — then the awards ceremonies are providing a something of a social service.
And the firm’s are by no means unsophisticated or naïve participants; if they want to spend the best part of 600 knicker per person for an inferior dinner out — and in doing so, prop up the finances of legal publishers — then why shouldn’t they?
PREVIOUSLY ON THE JUDGE RULES:
The Judge Rules: Training contracts and pupillages should be scrapped [Legal Cheek]
The Judge rules: The magic circle is dead! Er … no it’s not [Legal Cheek]