Libel law brings out the best in some lawyers, especially the more unconventional ones, says Geoffrey Bindman
One of the fastest-growing areas of legal practice in recent years is what is broadly called media law. It embraces show business and advertising: representing those who live in the glamorous worlds of broadcasting, publishing, and entertainment. Libel is often a prominent feature of this type of practice.
The lawyers who have succeeded in this brave new world have not always come out of the conventional middle-class mould that shaped most practitioners in more traditional areas. Some came up the hard way. Without the passport of a university education or family influence they had to learn the arts of persuasion and ingratiation. To make their mark, or perhaps from an inverted sense of inferiority, they sometimes affect a degree of eccentricity, attracting attention by an ostentatiously extravagant manner.
Oscar Beuselinck was a striking example. In his early life he had worked for a solicitor as an office boy, making the tea, and then as a
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