A FEMALE barrister friend, engaged in a lusty affair with a senior judge, recently confided: 'The thing is, ermine just does something for me.'
She is not alone. In the past ten days, it has emerged that Britain's two top lawyers have been playing away from home.
Sir Ken Macdonald, QC, the married Director of Public Prosecutions head of the Crown Prosecution Service and newly ennobled knight of the realm, was revealed to be having an affair with a younger blonde barrister, Kirsty Brimelow.
Next to come out of the woodwork was Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, the Prime Minister's senior legal adviser, who admitted at the weekend that he had conducted an extramarital affair with the attractive Anglo-Indian QC Kim Hollis.
So is the legal profession a hotbed of sexual activity? Having been in law for some 30 years, I can testify that the answer is yes, yes, yes.
The fact is that lawyers enjoy a life very similar to our notoriously licentious politicians, heady days wafting through the corridors of power, followed by - well, heady nights.
Unlike MPs, they have, in the main, been allowed to conduct this blessed life of bed-hopping away from the public gaze.
So why does the legal system rest on a bedrock of clandestine, salacious affairs? What breeds this lust? And why do barristers and judges become ever more likely to succumb to the sexual charms of their colleagues the more senior they become?
I refer the court back to my first witness: there is nothing more attractive than a man of power. The higher up in chambers in chambers or in the court system a man goes, the more desirable he becomes to fellow lawyers.
To outside eyes, these men might look as if they could do with a good dusting off, but in the cloistered and thrilling world of law, they are gods.
To understand sex appeal, watch a wigged and gowned barrister pace up and down outside a court room before his final speech to the jury, like a leopard poised to devour his prey.
Senior women lawyers become sharks in this atmosphere, too.
One told me that she now selects barristers on the basis of their court record - and how handsome they look in their Chambers photograph.
Remember, too, that this is a uniquely highly-charged work environment. All human life is before a court - murder, jealousy, lust, everything becomes magnified. It is a land of intrigue, deception and secrets.
OPERATING in the adrenaline- fuelled court room, barristers and judges determine an individual's future with the insouciance with which lesser mortals order a coffee.
They make weighty decisions on a whim. They go into battle with razor-sharp intellects on points of law.
One barrister described the exhilaration of winning an argument which changed the law as 'like having sex with clothes on'.
Make no mistake, power is an aphrodisiac and the frisson of sexual excitement is never absent from a court room. It is an intoxicating mix.
Little wonder, then, that there is an ever-eager army of willing consorts for those seeking an affair. This is, of course, a profession where people work long hours together under pressure. Recently, for instance, the gossip on the circuit has been the huge outbreak of affairs between top lawyers and court shorthand writers.
Then there are the younger lawyers, keen for promotion, and the legal apprentices, for whom the rewards of an affair with a powerful senior practitioner can be huge.
Of course I know lawyers who have slept their way to the top: many a pupil master has helped an adoring protege on the road to success, at a price.
As well as becoming more attractive to underlings as they go up the legal chain, lawyers become more vulnerable to the extramarital liaison - with success, they become lonely and distant from the real world.
It is no coincidence that barristers have the highest divorce rate of any profession.
Absorbed by their professional life, they become unable to relate to their spouses.
They spend most of the day in 18th-century dress undermining people in the witness box. Their skill is to eradicate a person's self-worth in a single swoop.
They go home and find themselves unable to switch off - and I should know, I was married to a barrister. Wives tend to be less moved by their finely honed techniques than judges.
Who wants to be cross-examined on the cost of the weekly shop?
Or interrogated over dinner?
Easy, then, if the adulation is missing at home, to fall for the adoring acolyte who flutters his or her eyelashes, tells you you're so clever, and who is happy to share your victories.
In practical terms, affairs are easy for lawyers: often you are sent with colleagues on long cases, where you live cheek by jowl in hotels.
The DPP's lover, Kirsty Brimelow, purportedly complained in an interview in 1999, that one of her married senior colleagues at her Chambers sent her a carefully wrapped negligee with a note inviting her to spend the night with him on their next case. Most alarmingly of all, perhaps, is the ease with which lawyers are able to justify their affairs. In discussions with my colleagues, I have been struck by this time and time again.
I believe it stems from working in a court system that is based on manipulation and mistruths. If you spend all day in court, dealing in lies - which is, let's face it, what lawyers often do - then your moral compass becomes skewed.
A good barrister can convince a jury that black is white. Of course, lawyers don't see this as a lie - it is 'looking at something from a different perspective'. The ability to twist the truth is proof of intellectual superiority.
EVENTUALLY, the distinction between truth and falsehood becomes distorted and this deception spills into your private life. Am I having an affair? 'No, no, no: I am seeing someone in a different context.' Everything becomes justifiable.
In my experience, lawyers have a unique ability to convince themselves that they are above any wrongdoing.
That is why, when you see photographs of these clever, arrogant men from the upper echelons of the law confronted with their affairs, they invariably look so puzzled - they truly cannot understand what they have done wrong.
There is a huge element of hypocrisy in these men, who judge others and yet are not inclined to judge themselves.
And yet, I cannot find it in myself to be too critical of my colleagues: I understand the tremendous pressure lawyers work under. You are obliged to lead a dual life, keeping the secrets of the court room from your colleagues and family.
Lawyers seek some form of escape. Often this is in drink - many of my colleagues find alcohol an essential prop - others find it in bed.
Some seek extramarital affairs, others go to seedy clubs or use prostitutes, as was the case with the former DPP Sir Allan Green, QC, caught kerb crawling in King's Cross.
Judge us if you like, but forget the horsehair wigs, gowns and stockings, adultery is the longest standing of legal traditions.
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