Dressing for work as a solicitor used to be easy. Solicitors had a uniform; dark blue or grey suit, possibly very stripy, shirt, tie, cufflinks. I used to call it legal chic. It made getting ready for work in the morning quite easy. Minimal brainpower was required, leaving plenty of little grey cells to mull over our cases. You couldn’t get it wrong. Apart from the time I went to work in a blue pin stripe trousers and grey pin stripe jacket, but I think we’ll gloss over that.
Dress down has made that much more complicated. Very few people dress up when they visit their solicitors now. Everywhere you go, the man in a suit and tie has become an endangered species. Two or three years ago while walking through Liverpool Street Station, I was struck by an almost complete absence of ties. It was as if they were going the same way as the bowler hat.
Most people now don’t bother suiting up for work, even if they work in an office. Smart casual is the order of the day for almost everyone. However, in the legal profession, smart dress has continued for the most part. Most of us don’t feel property dressed unless we are suited and booted. Barristers are even more formal, with their funny detachable collars and waistcoats, obligatory dress for appearing in open court, even though family barristers rarely have to get wigged up for hearings these days.
Recently a client came to see me and remarked that I was dressed smartly. Was I going to court that day, he asked? I explained that it was all for his benefit; when I don’t have appointments, I tend to wear smart jeans and an open neck shirt. For solicitors, such relaxed dress is about as close to being a maverick that any of us can manage.
This lead me to think, how do people expect their solicitors to dress? I have conducted some market research ( a very grand name for me asking people at networking breakfasts for a show of hands.) I can exclusively reveal that when asked should a solicitor wear a suit and tie, the vast majority say yes.
Well, there you have it. The tie stays on. And bitter experience tells me that is the safest option. The events of New Year’s Eve 2005 are seared into my memory. In a desperate attempt to be a bit more trendy, the law firm where I was a partner at the time decided to try and shake off the fusty image it had been cultivating since the late eighteenth century and announced that we would try dressing down on New Year’s Eve. I came to work resplendent in chinos, an open necked shirt and a Christmas jumper. All was fine until 2.30 pm when the court telephoned to tell me that the husband of one of my clients had been arrested for allegedly breaching an injunction and the District Judge was going to consider whether to commit him to prison for contempt of court that afternoon. Could I please come to court?
After briefly considering ordering the family department trainee to strip and loan me some clothes (an idea I swiftly rejected on the basis that her skirt and blouse were unlikely to fit me or indeed help much in the circumstances), I took a deep breath and grovelled before the District Judge who stared balefully at me from the bench, beautifully turned out in wig and gown.
I always kept a suit in the office thereafter.
5 October 2013
