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submit documents that really direct the issue and present
proof, but not before. Conditions like this, of course, place
the defence in a very unfavourable and difficult position.
But that is what they intend. In fact, defence is not really al-
lowed under the law, it’s only tolerated, and there is even
some dispute about whether the relevant parts of the law
imply even that. So strictly speaking, there is no such thing
as a counsel acknowledged by the court, and anyone who
comes before this court as counsel is basically no more than
a barrack room lawyer. The effect of all this, of course, is to
remove the dignity of the whole procedure, the next time K.
is in the court offices he might like to have a look in at the
lawyers’ room, just so that he’s seen it. He might well be
quite shocked by the people he sees assembled there. The
room they’ve been allocated, with its narrow space and low
ceiling, will be enough to show what contempt the court has
for these people. The only light in the room comes through
a little window that is so high up that, if you want to look
out of it, you first have to get one of your colleagues to sup-
port you on his back, and even then the smoke from the
chimney just in front of it will go up your nose and make
your face black. In the floor of this room to give yet another
example of the conditions there there is a hole that’s been
there for more than a year, it’s not so big that a man could
fall through, but it is big enough for your foot to disappear
through it. The lawyers’ room is on the second floor of the
attic; if your foot does go through it will hang down into the
first floor of the attic underneath it, and right in the corri-
dor where the litigants are waiting. It’s no exaggeration

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