‘Baroness Hale’ is currently in top ten on leaderboard
The aim of a new online game is to help a family court clerk get safely to her Christmas party by snowballing as many judges as possible along the way.
Sarah’s Snowball Fight is the brainchild of Sarah Robson, a specialist in personal injury and costs at Alpha Court Chambers. Speaking to Legal Cheek about her motivations for the game, she said:
“I thought I would try to show that I’m not one of those boring costs barristers. Plus it’s a fun way of letting out a bit of stress for people.”
The lead character in the game is ‘Mandy in Listing’, a flame-haired fictional clerk whose Twitter bio describes her as an “expert fiddler of family court fixtures since 1993” who “will disregard the 26 week rule for a bottle of Bristol Cream”.
Mandy needs gamers’ help getting safely to her Christmas bash so she can drink all the sherry she desires. But with judges trying to gatecrash the party, players can win points by hitting them with snowballs, while being careful to avoid hitting Mandy herself and spilling her sherry.
Reaction to the game, Robson continued, has been mixed. “Mostly people have been complaining that it’s so addictive,” she said, while “some complain it’s rigged (I wish I knew how)”. Oxford graduate Robson added:
“I had an email this morning from a (high-scoring) partner of a posh London firm noting that he had not managed to get much work done since discovering the game.”
The festive game’s leaderboard currently places Manchester-based Horwich Cohen Coghlan Solicitors in the top slot, followed by Robson’s son. Readers will also notice “Baroness Hale”, of Supreme Court presidency fame, is in the top ten. Legal Cheek suspects this may not actually be the top judge herself.
Trouble in the Robson household. Horwich Cohen Coghlan Solicitors have just knocked my son off the top score in @MandyinListing 's Christmas game. https://t.co/5f46JncAFv
He's determined to beat them again! pic.twitter.com/au2PL8nXxH
— Sarah Robson (@Portal_Queen) December 11, 2017
Giving perusers of her website the opportunity to throw snowballs at justices is, arguably, not actually the strangest thing Robson has ever done.
The civil law barrister and working mum, who signs off her email with “3rd Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do”, shot to Legal Cheek fame in 2013 when she produced an interesting martial arts video of herself breaking pieces of wood.
Which is presumably why Robson’s LinkedIn profile describes her as “literally a black belt barrister”.