I am reading the great old book by Karl Llewellyn, The Bramble Bush (1930);
it is an introduction to the study of law for law students.   He makes a
statement that gets to students' eye-rolling and complaining when I insist
that they use the *proper vocabulary*!  Llewellyn says this:
 
If you slurp your soup you may be looked at queerly, you may be laughed at;
you may even fail to be invited out again, another time.  But if you slip in
your legal etiquette it is not a question of queer looks or laughter or of
what may happen later; it is likely to cost you your case right here and
how;   your case and your client's case.  The lawyer's slip in etiquette is
the client's ruin.
 
 
 
Another way I put it to students--the importance of using the right
terminology, the right rule of law--is to equate it to computers.  Certainly
in the still-prevalent DOS system, you must type in the exactly correct and
frankly arbitrary symbols: C\data\1stfile\july.  If you don't do it
correctly, you don't get satisfactory results.
 
Daniel Warner
Western Washington University
Bellingham, WA 98225