The Law Society put together a stellar panel for the launch of its advocacy section, or the fifth inn, as president John Wotton called it. The lineup included the lord chief justice, Lord Judge (pictured), master of the rolls Lord Neuberger and president of the Queen’s bench division Sir John Thomas.

Prudently, given the state of night buses, only one was given a speaking part. Lord Judge commended the initiative and recounted his experience as a new boy at the bar in the far reaches of the Lincolnshire court of sessions. There, he said, he was always prosecuted by solicitor-advocates and never had a single acquittal - surmising ‘either they were very good or I was very bad’.

On the art, or otherwise, of persuasion, Judge quoted the comments of the late US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. As solicitor-general, Jackson used to say he made three oral arguments for every case he presented to the Supreme Court. ‘First came the one I planned - logical, coherent, complete. Second was the one actually presented - interrupted, incoherent, disjointed, disappointing. The third was the utterly devastating argument that I thought of after going to bed that night.’ And Judge admitted humbly, ‘that happens with judgments too.’

Judge also regaled the packed Chancery Lane common room with courtroom anecdotes. These were the Court of Appeal judge who fired a barrage of questions at a barrister who had barely begun his submissions. Unphased by the tirade, and with exquisite courtesy, the learned counsel said: ‘My Lord, I don’t imagine that this plane is ever going to take off, but can you at least let me get it out of the hangar?’ There were no further interruptions.

That segued immaculately into the story of the advocate who informed the Court of Appeal that he had three points to make - one unanswerable, one unarguable and a third that was arguable but answerable. Responding to the invitation to tell the court the unanswerable point, the advocate observed, ‘that is for you, lordships to work out’. Judge’s yarns were not delivered to rehearse a stand-up gig at the Hammersmith Apollo, but to offer insights on the art of advocacy. One weapon often ignored is the advocate’s voice, he said, which can be used to great effect to help wake up a struggling lord chief. Though Judge pointed out that boring the judge to sleep in the first place is bad advocacy - something Obiter observes would never emerge from a solicitor-advocate.