Exchanges every advocate will recognise

• Counsel: “Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?” Witness: “No.” Counsel: “So it is possible the patient was alive?” Witness: “No. His brain was in a jar on my desk.”
• Judge: “Counsel, you are straining the quality of mercy.” Counsel: “My Lord, I am merely straining to be heard.”
• Counsel, concluding a hopeless submission: “My Lord, those are my instructions.” The most honest sentence in advocacy.

The law student’s dictionary (first instalment)

• Moot point: an argument you win brilliantly, three hours after the moot has ended.
• Reading week: a week in which no reading occurs.
• Leading question: any question to which opposing counsel objects because it is working.
• Costs reserved: a phrase meaning “someone will suffer later”.

Strange but (technically) true

• England once required, by medieval statute, the practice of archery on Sundays — legislation more honoured in the breach for several centuries now.
• Various old town by-laws around the common-law world still solemnly regulate the driving of cattle through high streets during business hours.

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