The incoming tide: The civil law, the common law referees and advocates - The European Circuit of the bar's first Annual Lecture

When asked about his lineage, Jean-Andoche Junot, 1st Duc d'Abrantès – as you would expect from a self-made son of the French revolutionary wars - replied, "Ah, ma foi! Je n'en sais rien. Moi je suis mon ancêtre." Or as he might have said if he’d been on this side of the Channel, "Ah, my faith! I know nothing about it; I am my own ancestor." Tonight I suppose that I am my own ancestor as, with feelings of both pleasure and honour, I am giving the European Circuit’s first annual lecture. I am sure that it will be the first of very many. And as they say, from here, the only way is up.