It has been an education to work with our legal team, who currently include solicitor Ricardo Gama of Leigh Day and barristers Gretta Schumacher of Essex Court chambers and Remi Reichhold of 11KBW, and who at the end of last week filed our claim asking for Judicial review of the City of London Corporation's decision to find new operators for all their North London Open Spaces Cafés.

At times when lawyers gossip their shop talk baffles an outsider: 'We came at them with Section 6. They said Section 6? We are operating under Section 10. Section 10? I mean are they kidding?' etc ..

Charles Dickens drew some unforgettably menacing legal portraits, notably Jaggers in Great Expectations, who  'seemed to bully his very sandwich as he ate it'.  This team are effective in quite a different way. 

Skills worth copying:

•  force yourself to read properly. If you don't skim and if you read everything that is possibly relevant you can come up with eye-opening material
•  don't shout. The art of persuasion is about uncovering facts and trusting the reader's intelligence. Similarly avoid sarcasm or a superior pose. Why be dislikeable?
• have a story to tell. This doesn't mean tendentiousness, in which facts are bent to fit a narrative, but it does mean the vital ability to see the wood for the trees.
•  This story-telling skill also involves discarding some angles (which may be valid, or useful in a journalist's account). A good lawyer is a strategist, and is using information to win a case, not because it is entertaining or revealing in itself.

There's a lot more to this profession of course. As a lawyer friend of mine said: 'Some people, like me, happen to enjoy arguing. So imagine getting paid to do just that !'

And thank you all again for your generosity that has got us out of the swamp to these clear uplands where people discover what the rules really are.