Law Society’s Gazette, April 1980

In the news:A licensing authority has told me of an amusing occurrence in his court a few weeks ago. There were a number of solicitors present and when an applicant’s case was called the licensing authority asked whether or not he was represented. The applicant did not seem to understand what this meant, so the licensing authority said ‘Do you have a solicitor to speak for you?’ and instantly the man stood up, clicked his heels, and said ‘No, sir, I have come to speak the truth.’Sebastian Cullwick

Law Society’s Gazette, April 1990

Highway Robbery…Turpin was by no means the only highwayman to gain notoriety. One of the earliest was Isaac Atkinson, hanged at Tyburn in 1640. He specialised in robbing lawyers having ‘the impudence to follow the circuits and rob all of the profession that ever came his way’, including, on one occasion, Charles I’s attorney-general, William Noy. It seems to have been a lucrative practice. ‘In less than eight months he stopped about 160 attorneys only in the county of Norfolk, and took from them upwards of £3,000.’ Sarah Mercer

Letter to the editorThis morning, the boiler-man came to my house to service the Aga cooker and the boiler. He left after half-an-hour, having presented me with a bill for £54 plus VAT. A short while later, I appeared in a domestic court on behalf of a client. I, too, was engaged for half-an-hour, for which I was paid the princely sum of £23 at legal aid rates. I am sure that servicing the boiler is a highly skilled job, but it does not require a degree following two years in articles before you can earn a crust. Furthermore, my boiler-man’s office appears to be a D-registered Austin Maestro that might, during a bad year, cost him £1,500 to run. Last year, my share of the office overheads amounted to a figure slightly in excess of £40,000…Marcus Nickson, Whitehaven, Cumbria