Young people, eh? Just the other day Obiter heard about a new starter at a legal firm who, on his very first day at work, returned from an errand with a black eye after getting into a fight with some yob who’d remarked on his hat. The clerk’s name was Charles Dickens, born 200 years ago next month.

Echoes of Dickens’ early employment in Chancery Lane and thereabouts crop up throughout his literary canon.

Most memorably of course in Bleak House, with its depiction of advocates bobbing up ‘like eighteen hammers in a pianoforte’ while racking up costs of ‘from SIX-ty to SEVEN-ty THOUSAND POUNDS!’ in the little matter of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. However solicitors appear as notable characters in many of the Dickens greats, and not always as unsympathetic schemers or sinister harbingers like Great Expectations’ Mr Jaggers. There’s, er, Sydney Carton, and…

But we’ll leave that to you. To mark the bicentenary, nominations, please, for your favourite Dickensian legal characters and/or quotations. We shall endeavour to rustle up a bowl of smoking bishop for the best.

Email: obiter@lawsociety.org.uk.