Error

The human mind is admittedly fallible, and in most professions the possibility of occasional error is admitted and even guarded against. But the legal profession is the only one in which the chances of error are admitted to be so high that an elaborate machinery has been provided for the correction of error--and not a single error, but a succession of errors. In other trades to be wrong is regarded as a matter of regret; in the law alone is it regarded as a matter of course ... .
--A. P. Herbert, "Why is the House of Lords? sub nominee Inland Revenue v. Haddock", quoting the Master of the Rolls

(via The Green Bag)