branch of the law, quite different from the work of solicitors.

Litigators, it is said, look backwards, at what happened, while solicitors look forward, to anticipate what might go wrong.

The two English legal professions, barristers and solicitors -- Americans make no such distinction -- attract two distinct breeds of legal minds.

Under the British system, barristers generally engage in trial advocacy and solicitors in office work, but their duties overlap to a considerable degree.

Barristers are often called upon for an opinion or to draft documents and solicitors may appear in the lower courts.

Only barristers, however, may appear before the High Court. From their number are made the most important judicial appointments.

Barristers are members of one of four Inns of Court: Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple.

The early history of the Inns is obscure, but since their inception in the Middle Ages, they have taught English law, rather than Roman, which was taught in the universities. By the middle of the 13th Century, there arose a class of men who created and dominated the modern legal profession, who established the Inns of Court as a means of education.

The School of Law at the Inns of Court, known colloquially as `Bar School', traces its origins to the establishment of the Council of Legal Education in 1852. The present School consists of 45 staff, most of whom are qualified barristers.

The Bar Vocational Course prepares students for the more specialised training to be given in pupillage and lays the foundations for future practice, whether in Chambers or as employed barristers.

The course teaches seven skills: Advocacy, Conference, Drafting, Fact Management, Legal Research, Negotiation and Opinion Writing. It also covers the knowledge areas of Evidence, Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure and Sentencing.

A prospective barrister must pass a series of examinations established for the Inns by the Council of Legal Education and satisfy certain traditional requirements, perhaps most famously eating at least three dinners at the chosen Inn per term.

Collectively, the Inns of Court are known as the Bar; its General Council sets standards for the profession.

A barrister must accept a case regardless of his personal feelings, but may not do so where a conflict of interest arises.

Generally, barristers undertake work only on the introduction of a solicitor, who prepares and delivers the client's instructions to a barrister. In the UK, solicitors outnumber barristers by more than ten to one. The Bermuda ratio may not be far different.

To Hollywood, the image of the trial lawyer in full swing has proven irresistible.

The dynamics of courtroom drama make for more riveting viewing than the back-room labours of the solicitor or the corporate lawyer.

As a result, when people think of attorneys, they tend to imagine the impassioned advocate in the manner of Gregory Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird , Paul Newman as Frank Galvin in The Verdict , or any other of a dozen other fictional trial lawyers.

The law office has proved a useful locus for American and British television series to house their soap operatics, although the drama in such settings stems more from the relationships between lawyers than from that between lawyers and the law.

The reality of the modern practice of law is, of course, more mundane than that depicted in the breathless melodramas.

A portion of every litigation lawyer's day is spent dealing with relatively minor affairs and paperwork.

The most complex cases are corporate disputes, often involving opaque international matters.

These arcane proceedings are of the greatest interest to the parties to the case and those in their industries, and would not lend themselves well to the tight confines and emotional requirements of cinematic treatment.

Pure fiction? Dylan Mcdermott of the TV series The Practice. Legal work does not consist solely of breathless courtroom melodramas.

N.B.

This is the exact same Law Matters supplement that ran in The Royal Gazette on 20th September, 2000. However do the printing problems that affected the quality of the print, it was pulled from the circulation and did not appear again until the 9th October, 2000.