Law Society’s Gazette, 3 July 1991

Pickles retires

Judge Pickles (has) retired from the bench and at his final press conference accused solicitors of being ‘inefficient’ and suffering from the legal community’s ‘three Cs’ of complacency, conformity and conservatism.

He also said the laws on drugs, pornography and prostitution were in drastic need of liberalisation.

Law Society’s Gazette, 22 July 1981

A Common Expression – letter to the editor

Is there anything you – or we as a profession – can do to stop the press using the appalling description of ‘common-law wife’ or ‘common-law husband’?

It occurs frequently in the Daily Telegraph - otherwise a fairly respectable newspaper - and when I remonstrated with the editor he replied politely that it was a phrase in common usage, even in the courts, and they tended to report as used.

Can anyone enlighten me how this misconception arose, that the common law of England recognises as a wife or husband... what you or I would call a mistress, concubine or (hesitatingly) lover?

David Lyall, Leckhampton, Glos.

Law Society’s Gazette, July 1961

The Law as a Whole

(Excerpt from the right honourable Lord Justice Pearce’s address to the Law Society’s annual conference.)

Each of us according to his task naturally regards the law from a slightly different angle. For instance, when a case is fought each sees it in a different perspective.

The Queen’s Counsel, when a case is delivered to him, regards himself as the man in charge around whom the whole case centres and he worries accordingly.

He hopes to get adequate help in his problems from his junior and solicitor.

The junior barrister on the other hand regards himself as the important person who has advised in all the early stages of the case and has merely had to call in the assistance of a leader for his specialised skill in the final stages.

The solicitor, however, who has provided the client and advised and guided him from the very beginning, regards himself as the real commander in chief.

He selected the junior barrister who seemed most suitable when a junior was needed, and he provided himself with a leader who seemed most suitable when a leader was needed.

He, the solicitor, is therefore the person round whom the whole thing hinges, the general who sends into battle the troops whom he decides to employ and deploy for that purpose.

He regards the judge merely as the person especially provided by the state to decide his, the solicitor’s, case, the person from whom by skilful strategy and intelligent use of man-power he, the solicitor, intends to wring a decision in his client’s favour.

The judge on the other hand is apt to consider that he is the focus of the whole case.

Everything that has been done in the case so far, the interposition of solicitor and junior barrister and leader, has merely been done in order to give him assistance in deciding his case rightly.

To the litigant of course all the legal gentlemen concerned are merely the unavoidable necessities for enabling him to secure the rights to which he is entitled.