This year's Christmas card collection has so far thrown up the usual mix of the pleasing, the traditional, the e-mailed (admirably cheap but still yet to really do the trick, to be honest), the amusing (whether deliberately or not) and the plain odd, although there has been a marked reduction in the cards that aren't cards but rather cards to explain that firms won't be sending out cards and will instead donate the money to charity.

Recruiters Graham Gill handily attached a sachet of hangover cure Resolve to its card - the company solves lawyers' legal recruitment headaches, you see - while those ever-imaginative partners at City firm Lewis Silkin came up with their own card - just the name of the firm on front, and inside wishing us a very happy '(c)H(r)IS(tm)AS', explaining that this year the partners wished 'to afford our ideas the appropriate legal protection'.

As usual, the least Christmassy card came from Tim Devlin Enterprises, purveyors of public relations for the College of Law, adorned as it is with scenes from the production of Macbeth at the Klangbogen Festival in Vienna earlier this year.

But our favourite is a highly personalised effort from LexisNexis.

The card - depicting a pleasingly old-fashioned Christmas scene - is addressed 'Dear Editor' and delightfully signed off with 'From the publicity assistant'.