I’d have to say the call from Christopher Harder, 57, didn’t come as a complete surprise. “Hey, it’s Harder…I’m in critical care at Auckland hospital…the ticker laid me low this morning.” The man the Auckland district law society loves to hate, was letting Case Load know he was going to be out of action for a few days. After agreeing to be struck-off late last year on some pretty trivial law society misdemeanours Harder is in the final stages of a tell-all book detailing nearly 20 years of defending himself against a law society that has literally stopped at nothing to be rid of him. Why the law society has had it in for Harder since the day he first picked up his barrister’s practicing certificate no-one rightly knows. He’s been openly disdainful of it, he won’t play its reverential games and he won’t kow- tow to authority. On the other hand, as some of his colleagues say, he’s the guy you’d call if you were caught red handed bending over the corpse, bloody axe in one hand, signed confession in the other and yelling: “It’s a fair cop, Guv, you’ve got me bang to rights, I did it.” Harder, whose 143,000 word manuscript is a stunning eye-opener of law society intrigue from which Case Load looks forward to publishing juicier snatches in due course, would like to be a lawyer again and may have a go at being re-admitted to the Bar later this year. His book is dedicated to Auckland district law society president Gary Gotlieb who has already threatened to sue intended publisher Ian Wishart if there’s anything in it that offends him (Case Load Column posted July 14, 2006)

Feedback on this item to jockanderson@ihug.co.nz