By: Usefully Employed

Usefully Employed — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:38:18 +0000

At my for-the-meantime-secret-yet-currently-useful employer we have a department which sells IR35 insurance to IT contractors, so I’m well aware of what they earn. For many of them it probably is about comparable with your average barrister. I don’t think they’re greedy at all, I just don’t have a handle on how on earth government projects end up costing so many more times than was originally planned. IT projects are a key target, but look at any major public project, the Olympics, Wembley, the naff-looking Scottish Parliament. The reasons for targeting barristers are surely due to their one-man-band easily-bullied status. I think if you told the average guy on the street that the defence costs for all of the major cases in a year were £176M he’d be unsurprised, but if you told him that government routinely spend nine figure sums on abortive projects which don’t deliver anything, he’d be rightly pissed off.

By: simply wondered

simply wondered — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:08:13 +0000

actually i don’t think software contractors’ day rates are a million miles from barristers’. (tho i know less of the latter). the comparison could go further - the gp think barristers get a blank cheque, spout a load of gibberish, dress funny and when things go wrong claim it was defintely working when they drafted the skeleton and it’s all your fault for being rubbish when giving evidence. and have you tried switching the judge off and on again? (well maybe one can stretch a point…).
why chuck away legal advice when you have paid £100 million for it? because spending the other £900 million won’t make it do what you need of it.

Comments on: Unfair Competition

By: Usefully Employed

By: simply wondered