Queens Counsel (comic strip) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Queens Counsel is a British cartoon strip created by Alexander Williams and Graham Francis Defries

Graham Francis Defries

Graham Francis Defries is a partner in the law firm Dechert LLP. He is the co-creator with Alexander Williams of the Queens Counsel featured in the law pages of The Times since 1993.- External links:* *...

.
It first appeared in law pages of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

in 1993, where it has been featured ever since. It is a satire on law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

and lawyers.

The strip is published under the pseudonym "Steuart and Francis", these being the middle names of the two authors.

The Jokes

The jokes in the strip tend to revolve around familiar legal themes of pomposity and over-billing. The authors are both lawyers by training, though Williams left the Bar to pursue a career in film animation

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

. The characters are mostly legal archetypes, the barristers inhabiting the mythical Chambers of 4 Lawn Buildings, while the solicitors ply their trade at the firm of Fillibuster and Loophole.

List of characters

Sir Geoffrey Bentwood QC is the protagonist of the comic strip. He is a leading silk

Queen's Counsel

Queen's Counsel , known as King's Counsel during the reign of a male sovereign, are lawyers appointed by letters patent to be one of Her [or His] Majesty's Counsel learned in the law...

, Head of Chambers, part time Recorder

Recorder (judge)

A Recorder is a judicial officer in England and Wales. It now refers to two quite different appointments. The ancient Recorderships of England and Wales now form part of a system of Honorary Recorderships which are filled by the most senior full-time circuit judges...

and all around master of the legal universe. Extremely pompous, Sir Geoffrey is obsessed with law in general, and with being elevated to the High Court in particular. Even his family call him "Your Lordship".

Edward Longwind is a barrister

Barrister

A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...

and junior tenant at 4 Lawn Buildings. He aspires one day to be as pompous as Sir Geoffrey.

Helena is a very junior tenant. She is young, beautiful, and - for the moment anyway - idealistic. She was the first female pupil in Chambers and has been trying to open up the stuffy windows of 4 Lawn Buildings ever since.

Richard Loophole is a solicitor-advocate and senior partner

Partner (business rank)

A partner in a law firm, accounting firm, consulting firm, or financial firm is a highly ranked position. Originally, these businesses were set up as legal partnerships in which the partners were entitled to a share of the profits of the enterprise. The name has remained even though many of these...

in the firm of Fillibuster and Loophole. He is overpaid and - for the most part - underworked, unlike his luckless assistants, who regularly have to work over the weekend as Richard saunters off to play golf with his clients.

Quentin Crawley is a pupil barrister

Barrister

in 4 Lawn Buildings and all around dogsbody

Dogsbody

A dogsbody, or less commonly dog robber in the Royal Navy, is a junior officer, or more generally someone who does drudge work. A rough American equivalent would be a "gofer" or a "grunt", a "lackey", or "toady".-History:...

. His grasp of law is slender at best and his appearances in court are inevitably fumbled. He lives in permanent terror of being found out and booted out of Chambers.

Mr Sprocket is a client and endlessly unlucky litigant. He is invariably given terrible (and expensive) advice, usually resulting in a failed case and likely bankruptcy.

Rachel is Richard's assistant solicitor

Solicitor

Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...

. Like Helena she still retains some idealism and can dimly remember why she went into law in the first place.

Books

Queen's Counsel cartoons have been collected and published in a number of volumes.

Queen's Counsel - A Libellous Look at The Law (Robson Books 1995)
Queen's Counsel - Judgment Day (Robson Books 1996)
Queen's Counsel - Laying Down The Law (Times Books 1997)
The Times - Best of Queen's Counsel (Harper Collins 1999)
Lawyers Uncovered - Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Law But Didn't Want to Pay £500 an Hour to Find Out (JR Books 1997)
101 Ways to Leave The Law (JR Books, 2009)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.