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Tuesday 14 October 2014

The Discipline Of Law

Beware the late night blogger nursing both a glass of wine and a grievance. Step away from the invective.

Trust me I'm a lawyer - a phrase that constitutes a not meritless joke. But joking aside - trust me I'm a lawyer, and something is bugging me about the way I am these days asked or counselled to practise my trade. You see the thing is this - any half-educated pillock can be the sort of lawyer who can only ever tell you the reasons why you shouldn't do something. The better educated pillock (for there is no ground rule that precludes any stamp of lawyer from being a pillock) will tell you not only why you can do something but also tell you the efficient and lawful way of doing it. Good lawyers are enablers not road blocks. My hero Lord Denning put it well in Packer v Packer in 1954,
What is the argument on the other side? Only this, that no case has been found in which it has been done before. That argument does not appeal to me in the least. If we never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never get anywhere. The law will stand still whilst the rest of the world goes on: and that will be bad for both. 

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