Even judges of appellate courts and legal regulators get it wrong.  Either I am getting grumpier or the error is becoming more common: [2009] NSWCA 278; [2009] NSWCA 379; [2010] NSWCCA 6. Even Chief Justices get it wrong: [2008] NZSC 55 at [54]. ‘Practice’ is a noun.  ‘Practise’ is a verb.  So: ‘The practitioner’s firm [...]

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Given how often companies execute documents, and the consequences of getting it wrong, I have always found the law on the subject weirdly complicated.  Perhaps that’s just because I’m a litigator and never quite cottoned on to a commercial lawyer’s basic skill.  But a beautifully written Clayton Utz file note by John Elliott, about Vero [...]

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I turned up to run a trial recently in which orders had been made for witness statements by consent, and witness statements had been filed and served.  The trial judge simply advised he would not stand for written evidence regardless of what some other judge had ordered, and required the witnesses to give their evidence [...]

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For English news, I have switched from reading The Times‘s legal affairs section to The Guardian‘s.  The Times wanted me to pay to read, and I said no.  I am not a connoisseur of international newspapers, but from what I can tell, The Guardian is the best newspaper in the world, so I am happy [...]

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‘I Yield To My Learned Brother’ or ‘Is There a Candlestick Maker in the House?’ By Ogden Nash The doctor gets you when you’re born, The preacher, when you marry, And the lawyer lurks with costly clerks If too much on you carry. Professional men, they have no cares; Whatever happens, they get theirs.

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Update, 8 April 2010: The full-text version of Ms Jones’ article is freely available here.  See also this article published on the Queensland Law Society’s impressive website. Original post: Nicky Jones has written a scholarly article about lawyers’ duty to remain courteous: Lawyers, Language and Legal Professional Standards: Legal Services Commissioner v Turley [2008] LPT [...]

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I did a plagiarism case before the Board of Examiners last year, and looked up the cases then.  My colleague Patrick Over also reviewed them for his prosecution on behalf of the Legal Services Commissioner of the plagiarist solicitor in Legal Services Commissioner v WJK [2010] VCAT 108, and cleverly found a case from the [...]

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In Legal Services Commissioner v WJK [2010] VCAT 108, a sole practitioner who has written a legal text and published a number of articles succumbed to temptation when the pressures of life got to him and meant he did not have time to do a proper job of writing a 10,000 word research paper for [...]

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In the many panics during the Bar Readers’ Course when I was expected to adventure incompetently into the criminal law, the criminal lawyers whom I made sure to be nice to referred me to ‘the Bible’, Ross on Crime. Leafing through it disconsolately one day, I noticed the chapter entitled ‘Jazz’.  What a revelation.  After [...]

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To blog, you have to be able to write, type, and learn a new programme (WordPress in my case) but there is really only one trick to blogging, and that is finding what to write about efficiently.  I rely on various sources, most of which I will keep under my hat, but the best is [...]

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