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The rooms and the record

Eight photographs of rooms, shelves and surfaces. They show the setting the work happens in. None of them is a matter handled by Marchmont Vale Law, and none shows a client, a file or a document belonging to one.

I The reading room

One photograph, because a reading room is one room and not a tour.

  • A law library reading room under a vaulted ceiling, with galleries of bound volumes on three sides.
    01 The reading room of the law library, where a file is read end to end before anybody discusses it. It is a public collection, open to any member of the bar rather than owned by the practice.

II Wood and paper

The surfaces the work is read across, at the distance you would actually notice them.

  • Tiered galleries of bound law reports rising overhead, rail after rail of matching spines.
    02 The same reports stacked tier on tier above the reading floor, a century of them within reach of one ladder. Most arguments end in a volume somebody has already shelved.
  • Bookcases of legal volumes running the length of a library wall.
    03 Bound volumes running the length of a library wall. Most research is done on a screen now, but a printed series still makes the year an authority belongs to obvious at a glance.
  • Carved panelling and the raised bench of an empty courtroom, photographed close.
    04 Carved panelling and the raised bench of an empty courtroom, photographed close. The woodwork is older than most of the rules now argued in front of it.

III The courthouse

A short walk away, and where a matter goes only when paper cannot settle it.

  • A stone courthouse rising above the street, photographed from below against an open sky.
    05 The county courthouse, photographed from the street below. Most of what is drafted in an office like this one never goes through those doors, which is usually the better result.
  • An empty courtroom with fixed benches, a raised bench and panelled walls.
    06 An empty courtroom with fixed benches and a raised bench at the front, photographed between sittings. No matter of the practice’s was heard in this room.

IV Two objects

One used constantly, one almost never.

  • A shelf of bound law reports standing side by side, their spines numbered in gold.
    07 A shelf of bound law reports, their spines numbered in gold. They are consulted less than they once were and discarded far less often than that would suggest.
  • A wooden gavel resting on its block on a bare desk.
    08 A gavel resting on its block. It is the object every law office is photographed with and the one least used here: this work is drafting, reviewing and closing, not argument.

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