Snippets from The Reduced Law Dictionary, by Roderick Ramage
10 pint hero
It is inexcusable to drive with ten pints of best bitter inside you, but, that apart, this client was a hero. In those pre-breathalyser days, the police had other ways to test the intoxication of a driver, eg touching your nose with your eyes closed and walking along a straight line. He passed them all and refused to give a urine sample. So they locked him in a cell for the night, with a urinal in the corner. He survived the night without passing a drop of his ten pints, so they let him free the following morning. He deserved it.
Case management
The most important lesson that I received about the practice of law was given by my uncle, Roderick Davies of Manchester, on my first day as an articled clerk in 1962. Another articled clerk, a supercilious type, described him as ‘as thick as two short planks’, overlooking the fact that he invariably came to the right answer and rarely lost a case or a negotiation. The invaluable advice was to pin
