b'Page 8FBA/OC Does Practicing Law Makereadingwithaprettycloseexaminationeach You Smarter?week of the TimesLiterary Supplement .More than reading about and hearing from people in (Continued from page 5)otherprofessions,Iliketoseeothermindsat No,practicinglawdoesnotmakeyouworkinfictionandcriticismworkingthrough problems. I use these intellectual adventures to smarter.Itcanevenhavetheoppositeremind me that there isnt anything particular-effect.ly special about the law and that theres just so We would be better off, though we wouldmuch a lawyer can do in any given case, short of be playing against type, if we could stayprostitutinghimselffortheclientsbenefit.above the fray. Here our barrister coun- More to the point, I use my reading to confirm terpartsinEnglandandAustraliahavethe idea that lawyering is what I do, not who I perhaps shown us a better way, if we haveam. tobeintheadvocacybusiness.Every-thing is different for them. Layers of insu-lation protect them from being sucked in- *WilliamDomnarskipracticeslawinthe to the vortex of trial emotions and clientSouthland,hiresoutasaneditor,andwrites expectations. They are trained as forensicabout the profession.His latest book isRichard debaters and keep their distance from thePosner(Oxford University Press, 2016).litigant through a solicitor who is both an intermediary and the actual client.None of that identifying with the clients plight in their system.We face forces pushing ustobecometheclient.Theypushthe litigant away from the barrister and cre-ate breathing and thinking space for him.We need something in the way of a buffer to keep us from falling down the rabbit hole.Stuck as we are with our system, we need a counterbalance to push against the forc-es urging us to become what we do.We need something in the way of a buffer to keep us from falling down the rabbit hole. My own solution, my own modest proposal to save the profession, turns on extracur-ricularreading alotofit.Ireada great deal of fiction and complement that'