The ‘statutorily senile’ Lord Woolf, to quote his own words, entertained a capacity crowd last week with a lecture to the London Solicitors Litigation Association. The former lord chief justice was on fine form, Obiter is pleased to report. Spare no sympathy for criminal lawyers in portakabins, he said, referring to overcrowding at Woolwich Crown Court. ‘We civil litigators will be lucky to get portaloos.’

Woolf, who was the author of the sweeping Woolf reforms of the civil justice system in 1999, said he had never understood why people took on litigation, but was grateful they had enabled him to ‘earn an honest crust’ at the bar. Transparency, of which he had been a strong advocate, could be taken too far, however. He recalled a surgeon who was due to operate on his elderly mother, who recognised Woolf for his clinical negligence work. Exacting revenge, the surgeon treated Woolf’s ageing mum to rather more transparency than she really wanted by giving her a slice-by-slice preview of the operation she was about to undergo.

Woolf took questions after the lecture, but warned he would soon ‘rush off’ to the launch of the Supreme Court: ‘I can’t miss a free drink from the lord chancellor.’ Obiter raises a glass in salute.