A long brief
Subtitle: recollections of a crown solicitor.
Publisher: Collins
Published: 1966
Place of publication: Auckland [N.Z.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 213
Subjects: Lawyers -- New Zealand -- Biography.
First sentence: Having retired after a long period of years from active practice in law (in all its branches) in New Zealand Courts, I have been frequently pressed by friends to record some of my experiences during that time.
Description: Random reflections of a man whose life has been full, intensely interesting, and very often exciting. It is a human story, for most of his work–presenting the case for the Crown through some thirty years of criminal trials, helping to sort out the tangles of Maori land ownership, and Samoan affairs–has involved people.

Sir Vincent was a natural raconteur, and could have filled many volumes with memorable tales. Here are the best of them, each in its own way highlighting some aspect of the law, the breaking of it, and its enforcement. Although there is much that is amusing, there are, too, many violent, macabre, and horrible things in this book, as Sir Vincent describes, in part or in full, the crime and the trial of many of the famous cases in which he figured as Crown Solicitor. One or two of these cases attracted world legal attention.

From this book, too, one learns something of his boyhood and his background, his strong feelings towards football, and other games, his work as selector for both provincial and international teams–and his managership of two All Black tours.

He died in 1965.
Table of contents: title: Beginnings and Some Early Clients
label: Chapter One; title: From Crown Law Office to Private Practice
label: Chapter Two; title: Two Americans and Others
label: Chapter Three; title: The Waikino Tragedy
label: Chapter Four; title: Dr Dundas McKenzie
label: Chapter Five; title: Samoan Interlude
label: Chapter Six; title: The Trials of Munn and Kerr
label: Chapter Seven; title: Elsie Walker and the Bayly Case
label: Chapter Eight; title: Arson at Piha
label: Chapter Nine; title: Capital Punishment and Prisons
label: Chapter Ten; title: Rugby Recollections
label: Chapter Eleven; title: The Maori People
label: Chapter Twelve