This week we had the pleasure of a visit from two lawyers, John Dean and Letitia Smith. John is an old friend of Kay Philips' and Letitia is a Junior Counsel in his law practice.

Where had we seen the bow-tie wearing John before? He was straight out of one of those courtroom drama movies where, against all the odds, the cultured and liberal attorney triumphs in the last scene.

On this occasion, John and Letitia brought with them two case studies and distributed the background documentation to our members. In groups, we were asked to rule on the guilt or innocence of the accused parties.

At first, the cases seemed to be specially contrived ones, but it became evident that they were real cases in disguise, and that John had been involved in them.

Mostly, we got our judgments wrong, and mostly, we were harsher than the real-life judges had been. Not being lawyers ourselves, we were inclined to stick to the letter and steer clear of mitigating circumstances.

It was a very interesting exercise, although rather rushed. Our visitors had gone to a lot of trouble setting it up and we thoroughly enjoyed it.