Anyone who believes professional fees, mates’ rates and slightly flexible interpretations of an absolutely inflexible rule are modern inventions should consider a wonderfully candid letter written by William Webb Follett in November 1829.

Follett, later one of the most distinguished barristers of his generation and eventually Attorney-General, was advising an acquaintance about the cost of placing a friend with a special pleader as preparation for the English Bar.

His opening position could hardly be clearer:

“There is but one fee for pupils in the office, 100 Guineas.”

There we are. Settled.

One hundred guineas. One year. No negotiation.

Except…

Follett continues:

“No pupils are taken gratuitously, except as a matter of friendship between the parties.”

Ah.

So there is only one fee, unless, of course, you know the right person, in which case the fee is nothing at all.

And then, just as our wonderfully straightforward fee structure begins to look slightly less straightforward:

“some special pleaders will take a pupil for half a year, in which case only half the accustomed fee is paid.”

Right.

So, to recap:

The fee is 100 guineas.

Unless you’re a friend.

Or only want six months.

But apart from those exceptions, there is absolutely one fee.

One can almost hear John Cleese in the Monty Python sketch:

PUPIL: The fee is 100 guineas?

FOLLETT: Precisely.

PUPIL: No exceptions?

FOLLETT: Certainly not.

PUPIL: What if I’m a friend?

FOLLETT: Oh, friends are free.

PUPIL: So that’s an exception?

FOLLETT: No, no. That’s friendship.

PUPIL: What about six months?

FOLLETT: Fifty guineas.

PUPIL: Another exception?

FOLLETT: Absolutely not. That’s half a year.

PUPIL: So when exactly is the fee 100 guineas?

FOLLETT: When you pay the usual fee. It’s fixed!

There is something irresistibly Monty Python about the logic, particularly because Follett himself seems entirely unaware that, nearly two centuries later, the paragraph would read like a comedy routine.

But behind the humour is a fascinating glimpse of how entry into the legal profession actually operated.

Follett had considerable personal experience of the system. He had himself trained in chambers, became a special pleader in 1821 and was called to the Bar in 1824. By 1829 he was therefore advising on a professional route that he had personally followed.

And after carefully explaining all the ways in which the 100-guinea rule might not, in fact, involve paying 100 guineas, Follett gives the prospective barrister some bracingly straightforward advice:

“The best thing for your friend to do is certainly to pay the usual fee & to enter into some good special pleader’s office for the year, if he is intended for the Bar in this country.”

In other words:

Yes, there are ways around it.

No, your friend isn’t using them.

Pay the 100 guineas.

Nearly 200 years later, perhaps professional networking hasn’t changed quite as much as we like to think.

It’s not what you know. It’s who you know. And if you don’t know them, apparently it’s 100 guineas.

Sir William Webb Follett, QC (Dec 1796 – Jun 1845) was an English lawyer and politician who served as MP for Exeter (1835–1845). He served twice as Solicitor-General, in 1834-5 and 1841 and as Attorney-General in 1844. He was knighted in 1835. He was reputed to have been the “greatest advocate of the century”.

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