English judges are known for choosing their words very carefully: In this context, the recent Commercial Court judgment of Mrs Justice Cockerill in the case of Saab v Dangate, Brown and Leighton makes for particularly interesting reading. Although her language is not injudicious, she certainly does not mince her words. In describing how two former […]
Why young lawyers are turning away from alcohol-related social events. At a recent Sunday lunch party, a middle-aged lawyer reached in front of me to take a swig from her friend’s wine glass. “I’m doing Dry January,” she said with a smile. Somewhat non-plussed, I looked at the large tumbler of orange juice from which […]
Ask people to name a famous lawyer in history and they would struggle. After all, the most prominent lawyers in English history – such as Sir Edward Coke and Lord Mansfield – are not exactly household names. In particular, advocacy is generally regarded as an ephemeral art, not least because once spoken, a lawyer’s words […]
A child born into a royal family cannot be unborn from it, merely hidden away in the hope that people forget about him. That has been the sentiment expressed by leader writers across much of Britain’s print media in relation to Prince Andrew, the second son of the Queen and Prince Philip. By virtue […]
It’s a contentious question. So out of curiosity, I searched ‘greatest ever lawyer’ and hit return. Up they came. A photo montage of Google’s greatest in order of popularity and significance as determined by complex, opaque algorithms: Joe Jamail, Abraham Lincoln, Mary Jo White, David Boies, Clarence Darrow, Johnnie Cochran. And so on. No surprise […]
That we finally have another general election has been widely anticipated. So much for the Fixed-term Parliaments Act – something of a misnomer since this will be the third such election in four years. Now that the campaign is fully underway, the outcome nevertheless remains uncertain given the unreliability of opinion polls and the enormous […]
The night club. The speedboat. The mob. The booze cruise. The spread of jazz. The cocktail. What do they all have in common? They are the results, direct and indirect, of Prohibition. The hundredth anniversary of legislation which introduced the banning of alcohol in the United States recently passed without much notice. But its effect […]
It’s law firm directory season once again. Marketing professionals everywhere are celebrating the rankings of their firms and individual partners in the latest editions of the Chambers and Legal 500 directories. Their excited, self-congratulatory posts on LinkedIn serve to show just how much they matter. These directories have been part of the legal landscape for […]
I can still recall the excitement of my first Amazon order in 1996 – a book delivered from amazon.com in the US took just a few days to arrive on my desk in Hong Kong. A generation later, Amazon has put a tentative toe in the online legal services market. My sense of excitement is […]
Corruption in Panama is nothing new. The country’s notorious former leader, Manuel Noriega, was convicted by a US court in 1992 of racketeering, drug smuggling, and money laundering. After serving a long US prison sentence, in 2010, he was sentenced in France to a further seven years in prison for money laundering. According to Transparency […]
Two recent media stories have featured prominently in relation to where Britain’s drug laws are heading. In isolation, the arguments supporting each of them make sense, but put together they demonstrate how contradictory our legal system and public health policy might become, should they both be realised simultaneously. The first story concerned a government green […]
An early mantra for Trump’s 2020 presidential election campaign has already made its mark at Republican rallies. The antithesis of woke, Donald supporters now break into a chilling new chant: “Send her back!” The object of their vilification is Somali-born Ilhan Omar, who serves as a congressional democrat in Minnesota. It echoes the 2016 campaign […]
