Sir Robert Menzies

• Admitted to the Victorian Bar and to the High Court of Australia in May. Menzies is the first of the few pupils accepted to read with the brilliant barrister Owen Dixon.

"It is the practice of a newly called barrister to 'read' in the chambers of some leading junior. He reads the briefs that come in; he is encouraged to discuss them with his chief. He is, of course, free to accept briefs of his own, and if he is lucky, as I was, gets a few. But his great advantage is that he sees a busy junior at work and at close quarters. The law comes alive for him. He begins to know how little he knows and what a world of difference there is between academic learning and the same learning when applied to the tangled facts of life."
Sir Robert Menzies The Measure of the Years, 1970 p 229.