Product Description

Litigation is like war, BabyBarista. Read this and learn. It's BabyBarista's first day as a pupil barrister in chambers. Never mind his legal qualifications; it's his summer working in Starbucks that's going to stand him in good stead, since coffee-making seems to be his chief responsibility (with the odd bout of photocopying to relieve the tedium). He's got one year to make his mark and prove by foul means or fair that, out of the four pupil barristers, he's the one who deserves to stay on and win the sought-after prize of a tenancy in chambers. It's sort of like Big Brother, but with little horsehair wigs. Once assigned to a pupilmaster, an oily character he calls TheBoss, BabyB retreats to his tiny desk in a dusty corner to consider the competition: TopFirst, a Cambridge graduate with a prizewinning CV and an ego to match; BusyBody, a human whirlwind on a husband hunt; and finally wide-eyed Worrier, who carries the world on her anxious shoulders. 'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles,' says Sun Tzu, whose book The Art of War is becoming BabyB's bible. Quietly, he smiles to himself, and begins to make some plans Part Rumpole, part Flashman, crafty and naive by turns both in and out of court, BabyBarista opens a window onto the fascinating and secretive (and frequently absurd) ways of the legal profession through his secret blog. Puncturing pomposity and exposing injustice with subversive wit, this diary of a nobody is an hilarious tour around the modern bar.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38742 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
`With every turn of the page, my eyebrows moved slightly further up my forehead. There was I, assuming the junior bar was crammed with the serious and the high-minded, where the only trace of ambition is the politest nudge ... BabyBarista shows the eagles and eaglets with their talons out and their feathers up. It is a wonderful, racing read - well-drawn, smartly plotted and laugh out loud - and we all just have to pray that none of it is true. You'll never look at a young lawyer in the same way again.' --Jeremy Vine, broadcaster and journalist

`A cross between The Talented Mr Ripley, Rumpole and Bridget Jones's Diary ... a gallop of a read'
--The Times

Review
`BabyBarista is a classic British comedy set in a world of vanity, egos and cut-throat ambition that puts even the acting profession into the shade. It's sassy, sexy and hilariously funny.'

Review
`BabyBarista provides an entertaining and highly amusing insight into the mysterious world of wigs and gowns. Right from the start the gloves are off and the fight for tenancy is no less dramatic than a top class boxing match. It's a terrific read which makes you both laugh and keep the pages turning. It also confirms what I've always suspected - that the courtroom is not so different from the boxing ring.'

Customer Reviews

Funny, fast-paced and original
An absolute joy of a book - very cleverly structured, beautifully written, and finding a neat balance between the entirely plausible and jaw-dropping absurd. BabyBarista will ring all too familiar bells for those who've been there and done all that, and gives the rest of us a fascinating glimpse inside the archaic (and astonishing) world of the English Bar. A classic page-turner that you really don't want to end, with an above-average quota of LOL moments.

brilliant satire on the Bar
This book is marvelous; genuinely funny, touching, witty, even suspenseful. It is a wonderful insight into the dirty politics of pupillage at the Inns of Court. I loved it.

Machievellian intrigue bursting out of every page
Having followed the BabyBarista Times Online blog avidly now for three years, I approached the book with concern that this would be a 'cut and paste' job reproducing what has gone before.

But, to my delight, the author has produced a hugely expanded version of the famous BabyBarista blog, with characters fleshed out, plotlines expanded and machievellian intrigues bursting out of every page. It is an incredibly funny satire of life as a pupil barrister, seen through the eyes of the eponymous 'BabyBarista' (or BabyB as he endearingly refers to himself throughout).

BabyB is a charming yet ruthless cross between Sir Humphrey Appleby and Frances Urquart, but without the grey hair and instead with a eye for the ladies (in particular, the sultry character known as TheVamp and his good friend Claire - the only character with a real name throughout the whole book). Plotting his way around the intrigues of a fictional set of Chambers, BabyB manipulates the hopes and fears of his rivals in an effort to win the golden chalice at the end of pupillage - a tenancy.

Tim Kevan's view of the Bar is far more worldly than that of John Mortimer or Caro Fraser. This is no whimsical portrayal of a collection of eccentric individuals. Rather, the author describes a world of individuals motivated by ambition and money living side-by-side with the more traditional, honourable barrister most frequently seen in fiction.

This book deserves to be on every bookseller's Top 10 list - it is screamingly funny, bitterly satirical and hugely informative about the problems of life during pupillage, told by a man with great love for, and knowledge of, his profession.