IN THE HEART of London, I found the narrow sign leading to the narrow stairs and the narrow man who was the sole employee of this minor branch of Shopshire, Shopcraft, and Shoplift, a legal office I’d had occasion to frequent. The main offices, several blocks from here, were spacious, lavishly appointed, a bit like a museum display. Ideal for wooing clients. But the true labors of legal representation took place in this and another additional office. There a dozen lawyers and their dogsbodies found ways to make cases drag out as long as possible to accrue the highest legal fees imaginable. Here was the dump, a wretched place of unappreciated toil and misery. In this place, old cases came to die, and those unsound and in need of hiding were bricked up behind row after row of filing cabinets
