Geoffrey Bindman on receiving his fiftieth practising certificate
I recently received with my annual practising certificate a kindly letter from the chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority congratulating me on my accumulation of no less than 50 of these uninspiring but necessary documents.
In the same week, coincidentally, the Law Society Gazette in its “Memory Lane” column reproduced a report of a solicitor who retired in 1947 at the age of 98 after collecting 75 certificates. Even that spectacular achievement failed to beat the record, which—unless it has by now been superseded—is held by the late Mr FS Rix, who practised in Beccles in Suffolk and had held 76 certificates when he died at the age of 100 in October 1933. It is not my ambition to enter this competition, but my modest demi-centenary reminded me of what it took to get my first certificate in 1959.
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Many of the articled clerks in the 1950s had started straight from school at the age of 18 (or they may have added two years national service, which ended only in 1959).
