8 June 2015, 7 pm I attend a banquet laid on by the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives. This necessitates the donning of a posh frock and quite a lot of breathing in, especially after the pastries and granola. Also some shoes that I can network in but not walk in. It is a shame that so many shoes are unable to cope with both. I am chatting to Mr Heap, the IPReg Chairman, when we are called to dinner. He is most solicitous and sees me all the way to my table, just to make sure it is not the same table as his. This I believe is called Outcomes-Focused Regulation.
The table is set for an extremely posh meal. There are so many sets of cutlery that there is no space for side plates, so we have to eat our bread rolls out of our laps. This makes me feel much more at home. 9 June 2015, 11 am I meet the head of AIPPI-UK for coffee. He tells me about AIPPI, and IPLA and TIPLO and IBIL and UNION and How on earth does he remember all these acronyms or is he actually just making them up?? I have not a clue why there are so many groups all doing IP at once when surely the only people who do it properly are the people at CIPA? So then we discuss IP policy issues, about which the AIPPI appear to have an unhealthy level of understanding and this is because, I learn, they spend their time doing research and high-level debates instead of liaising with Biscuit Pixies and Flower Fairies. It is at this point that I realise I should keep my mouth shut and drink my coffee. It is unusual for me to realise this before the end of a meeting. Perhaps I am improving after all. 9 June 2015, 2.30 pm Mr Davies and I go to a meeting of the Legal Services Board. Mr Bader, who is the Chief Eggsek at ITMA, is there too. Mr Davies tends to get cross with Mr Bader for being good-looking. I have to sit between them to stop them fighting. I make sure I look at both of them for equal lengths of time, so that Mr Davies doesn’t get jealous. The LSB tell us how, now that we have all paid for legal services regulation to be set up, they are looking at ways to knock it down and start again. They say that obviously the Legal Services Act is only half-finished and soon there will be a second half and then everything will become clear again. We could have told them about the half-finished-ness five years ago, but I don’t think any of us would have predicted there might be a Part Two, much less that it might make things clearer. Anyway, luckily we will all be able to help redefine legal services regulation because we are all Stakeholders and we are all going to be Consulted and going forward there will be Regulatory Toolkits for everyone. Yay! I nearly fall asleep once or twice. I make sure to dribble equally on both Mr Bader’s and Mr Davies’s shoulders, so that Mr Davies doesn’t get jealous. 9 June 2015, 4.30 pm It is the second meeting of the Patent Attorneyettes’ Afternoon Tea Society. There are still only two of us, but we are the founder members so that’s OK. We are also the Governing Council and the Executive Board and two committees (one each). We have a full agenda today. We must choose cake, eat cake, drink tea and define our mission statement. The mission statement we decide on is: “Forget the policy; just do the cake”. Only we do not use the word “forget”. By the end of the meeting, the agenda is done but we are full. I think the Americans would be impressed.
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