Obiter understands how easy it is for fingers to slip while typing, so is naturally hesitant to highlight the typos of others. But a press release posted on the Bar Council’s website last week caused a moment of head scratching in Obiter Towers. Bar chairman Nick Green QC was venting his spleen over the fee reductions for publicly funded criminal barristers. The headline read ‘Bar Council chairman calls for bar’s voice to be head on cuts’. Head on cuts? The slip conjured up the macabre image of Green’s severed noggin on a spike as a warning to other troublesome lawyers who criticise government. It also set Obiter pondering on, if not quite ‘the three Rs’, the vital importance of one of them, and the effect of its omission. Without an ‘r’, the bar itself would be reduced to the noises made by sheep. And without their final ‘r’, its learned members would more closely resemble coffee wallahs (baristas, as they are known) than lawyers. So it came as a relief to all when the Bar Council website reposted the headline with the missing ‘r’ duly inserted: ‘Bar Council chairman calls for bar’s voice to be heard on cuts’. A far less chilling image.