SWOTTING UP

You can't fool all of the people all of the time, even when they are judges: that's the lesson learnt by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, just after he took the post in October 2000, fresh from three years chairing the BSE inquiry.

One of his first tasks, Lord Phillips told the recent Law Society civil litigation conference, was to address an Association of District Judges seminar on the Woolf reforms; unfortunately, he had been so immersed in BSE that he was the only senior member of the judiciary who did not receive any training relating to them.

So the assessment forms filled out afterwards did not make altogether comfortable reading: 'Bewilderment is not the prerogative of the inferior judiciary,' one delegate reported; 'Content little, presentation good,' another said, finding something positive at least; while a third discovered that 'the appointment of the Master of the Rolls is fairly arbitrary'.

Nonetheless, he decided, Lord Phillips was 'a good egg'.

And by now, with a bit of luck, he's boned up on the Civil Procedure Rules.