Law Society’s Gazette, August 1961

Improving the Public Image

You and your readers might be interested to hear of an unspoken tribute which we received this morning to the work of our office cleaner, when one of the partners on leaving the office found a young lady combing her hair and putting on her make-up, using one of our brass plates as a mirror.Challinors, Stoke-on-Trent

Les Temps Perdus

‘Historical researchers have revealed that Fetter Lane [a major road in modern-day Legal London] was at one time called Fewtars Lane and was apparently a garden, the name Fewtars being derived from an old English word meaning "idle people".

Our informants go on to explain that the locality was used as a place of relaxation for the legal profession.’ Local Government Chronicle

Do Not Abandon Hope An Antidote to Insularity, by Niel G. C. Pearson[The UK was about to apply, unsuccessfully as it turned out, to join the European Common Market.]

Now that it looks as if we have got to be some sort of Europeans, whether we like it or not, the hideous possibility arises that English lawyers will have to make the acquaintance of Continental systems of law.

The fact that I am an average solicitor with an ordinary practice in a provincial city may qualify me to give a reassuring word or two on this subject and so comfort those of my professional brethren who stand in terror of frogs legs, foreign languages and irregular verbs.

Linguistically I have school French, brushed up by several cheap holidays and a few months soldiering in Normandy, some peasant-type Italian and only enough German for bed and breakfast. (Nevertheless) seven or eight years ago I was asked by the Board of Trade to represent the UK at Geneva on a working party of so-called ‘experts’ which had been set up by the Economic Commission for Europe to study International Commercial Arbitration.

My leading recollection was that my view of the Russians was not far different from everyone else’s view of the British: very nice chaps personally, no doubt, but when it comes to getting them to leave the crow’s nest and get down on deck with the rest, it’s not very likely.

As to the rest of Europe, on first acquaintance it too ran true to form. The French delegate was the quintessence of his country’s spirit of logical scepticism, with a sense of humour and a knowledge of the world which made everyone jerk himself into wakefulness whenever the French delegation had anything to say.

The West Germans had always done their homework better than anyone else and their essays were always on the alpha plus level of careful scholarship.

The Italians displayed a subtlety and a degree of civilised sensitivity in debate which they had the honesty to admit was needed in explaining the still medieval character of some of their legal arrangements. And so on.