Mindfulness and meditation, Obiter notes, are not for everyone. What can a stressed lawyer turn to if, say, they have trouble getting up from a floor cushion, or think that whale music is lacking in the Sturm und Drang department?

Well, good news comes from the basement of esteemed Cambridge bookshop Heffers. If you are feeling the strain, have you considered… criminal law? The academic bookshop has taken the bold decision to file its entire criminal law section under ‘Therapy’.

Therapeutic: Feeling the strain? Reach for a criminal statute

Therapeutic: Feeling the strain? Reach for a criminal statute

Is this a filing error? Obiter has decided not. There are many supposed benefits to criminal law books. Do you need something for a stressed gut? Clarkson and Keating’s Criminal Law: Text and Materials is, its publisher Sweet & Maxwell notes, ‘easily digestible’.

Those searching for a little perspective on things could do worse than reach for Susan Easton and Christopher Piper’s Sentencing and Punishment: the Quest for Justice, which Oxford University Press claims the reader will find ‘thoughtful, impartial’. Readers are promised they will find ‘balance’.

And it’s very flexible. Obiter notices that as therapy, criminal law can be practised in or out of office hours, and encompasses a range of activities, which suit lone work or a multi-handed group. Why not try it?

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