Some have lampooned Chris Grayling for his lack of a legal qualification. Others have sought to undermine him with cruel nicknames, such as Failing Grayling – from which a Twitter account has been spawned. Rather cruelly, said Twitter account recently drew attention to the Justice Secretary's likeness to a "dead eyed wet fish" – a reference, of course, to the Grayling fish (pictured below).
Continuing in that vein, here are five further animals that, arguably, closely resemble Chris Grayling.
Applied Language Solutions (ALS), the gaffe-prone interpreting service awarded the exclusive right to supply interpreters to courts in England and Wales, faces two high-profile hearings in the next ten days in which its £300m five-year contract with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) will come under scrutiny.
At the first one, to be held at 3.15pm today in front of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, the Capita-owned company – which has recently been re-branded as Capita Translation and Interpreting – will be asked to explain "shocking failings", including apparently inviting a rabbit and a cat for "interpreter assessments" and offering a dead dog an "immediate assignment in court".
Former Crown Court judge Beatrice Bolton achieved fame when she stormed out of court after being convicted of letting her German shepherd bite a neighbour. She retired on medical grounds earlier this year, before a disciplinary inquiry into her behaviour had concluded.
Speaking publicly for the first time about this traumatic period to Sky Tyne and Wear over the weekend, Bolton explained how she spiralled into severe depression after the dog bite incident.
The second part of the interview, in which Bolton suggests that “nobody else would have been prosecuted” for her offence and labels the police as “absolutely appalling”, is below:
Thought that corporate law was all about the survival of the fittest and the drive to make money?
Well, you’re wrong, says Hugh Crisp, the ex-Freshfields boss who’s now teaching business, law and management skills at Oxford Said Business School.
Instead, Crisp – who has been working with Oxford University zoologists to apply principles of behavioural ecology to the corporate world – reckons big law firms are made to tick by the sort of principles of collaboration and group spirit typically exhibited by meerkats and naked vole rats.
Looking at the recent big law success stories/car crashes, maybe Crisp has a point. Halliwells and Dewey & LeBoeuf collapsed amid greed and a breakdown of collegiate spirit, while magic circle firms like Crisp’s former employer Freshfields and the cult-like Slaughter and May do seem to have a certain binding Masonic culture.
Last Wednesday I brought you the news that the 'Lawyer Dog' meme had gone viral, underlining what a positive force the internet has become in our lives.
But such is the pace of change these days that just a week on there is a new animal-themed lawyer meme going viral (whatever that means exactly): meet 'Lawyer Cat'.
Legal Cheek's associate editor Emily Jupp, who by day works as a journalist in the digital team at The Independent, tells me that pictures of animals tend to generate particularly high web traffic – not that the Indy ever resorts to such tricks, of course.
So Lawyer Dog's success should come as no surprise. Lawyer Dog is, by the way, a dog who has been hilariously dressed up as a lawyer! But the fun doesn't stop there. Lawyer Dog comes up with the most fabulous wisecracks, too.
In no way seeking to exploit the animal = lots of hits rule, I bring you more fun-packed Lawyer Dog scenes below...
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