Every year, when a fresh intake of students begin their law degrees, British legal academics quietly shake their heads and mutter to one another about the poor standard of written English of many of their new charges – and they are not talking about the foreigners. So it’s always comforting to know that the same problem exists in other countries – particularly across the pond, where academics are not afflicted by the British characteristic of understatement. Indeed, it appears that in the US, poor writing standards are rife not just when students begin their course, but even after they have entered the profession. At a recent roundtable hosted by Chicago Lawyer magazine, the deans of five law schools got together to voice their concerns. Judge Warren Wolfson, formerly a judge in the Illinois Court of Appeals and currently interim dean at Chicago’s DePaul University, said: ‘I'd like to figure out some way to teach students how to write. I was on the appellate court for 15 years, and the state of writing among new lawyers and young lawyers is deplorable. It just seems that legal writing, every time I’ve run across it in law school, is the crazy uncle in the closet. No one wants to get in there. The students hate it. They don’t come out learning how to write.’ Obiter is intrigued to know if things are equally bad in Blighty, and puts out a plea for amusing examples of poor spelling and grammar written by students and – dare we suggest – lawyers. Email: obiter@lawsociety.org.uk.