When I became a judge in 1992, what had seemed at the Bar to be occasional glitches in the documentation of cases turned out to be a never-ending nightmare. Sarcasm seemed a cheap way of letting off steam about it.

I gave these Laws of Documents, to which my colleagues Charles McCullough and Janet Smith had contributed some pointed suggestions, to the editor of Judicial Review for its first issue. It seems to have rung bells all over the English-speaking world, where – if the communications I've had from Commonwealth judges are any indication – an orderly and economical set of documents is as rare as it is in the UK.

It is a tribute to the legal profession that, although they have been widely disseminated, the Laws of Documents have had no effect whatever.