his desk — at this he tapped one of them — but he regretted he couldn’t show it, as it was a
matter of official secrecy. Nevertheless the vast experience he had gained through all these
cases would now redound to K.’s benefit. He had started on K.’s case at once, of course,
and the first plea was almost ready for presentation. That was very important, for the first
impression made by the Defense often determined the whole course of subsequent
proceedings. Though, unfortunately, it was his duty to warn K., it sometimes happened that
the first pleas were not read by the Court at all. They simply filed them among the other papers and pointed out that for the time being the observation and interrogation of the
accused were more important than any formal petition. If the petitioner pressed them, they
generally added that before the verdict was pronounced all the material accumulated,
including, of course, every document relating to the case, the first plea as well, would be
carefully examined. But unluckily even that was not quite true in most cases, the first plea
was often mislaid or lost altogether and, even if it were kept intact till the end, was hardly
ever read; that was of course, the lawyer admitted, merely a rumor. It was all very
regrettable, but not wholly without justification. K. must remember that the proceedings
were not public; they could certainly, if the Court considered it necessary, become public,
but the Law did not prescribe that they must be made public. Naturally, therefore, the legal
records of the case, and above all the actual charge-sheets, were inaccessible to the accused
and his counsel, consequently one did not know in general, or at least did not know with
any precision, what charges to meet in the first plea; accordingly it could be only by pure
chance that it contained really relevant matter. One could draw up genuinely effective and
convincing pleas only later on, when the separate charges and the evidence on which they
were based emerged more definitely or could be guessed at from the interrogations. In
such circumstances the Defense was naturally in a very ticklish and difficult position. Yet
that, too, was intentional. For the Defense was not actually countenanced by the Law, but
only tolerated, and there were differences of opinion even on that point, whether the Law
could be interpreted to admit such tolerance at all. Strictly speaking, therefore, none of the
counsels for the Defense was recognized by the Court, all who appeared before the Court
as councils being in reality merely in the position of pettifogging lawyers. That naturally
had a very humiliating effect on the whole profession, and the next time K. visited the Law
Court offices he should take a look at the lawyers’ room, just for the sake of having seen it
once in his life. He would probably be horrified by the kind of people he found assembled
there. The very room, itself small and cramped, showed the contempt in which the Court
held them. It was lit only by a small skylight, which was so high up that if you wanted to
look out, you had to get some colleague to hoist you on his back, and even then the smoke
from the chimney close by choked you and blackened your face. To give only one more
example of the state the place was in — there had been for more than a year now a hole in
the floor, not so big that you could fall through the floor, but big enough to let a man’s leg
slip through. The lawyers’ room was in the very top attic, so that if you stumbled through
the hole your leg hung down into the lower attic, into the very corridor where the clients
had to wait. It wasn’t saying too much if the lawyers called these conditions scandalous.
Complaints to the authorities had not the slightest effect, and it was strictly forbidden for
the lawyers to make any structural repairs or alterations at their own expense. Still, there
was some justification for this attitude on the part of the authorities. They wanted to
eliminate defending counsel as much as possible; the whole onus of the Defense must be