Council

The Jolly Contrarian’s Glossary The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™ Go Premium The Legal Council, yesterday Index — Click the ᐅ to expand: Glossary Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

A council is a municipal body where mediocre people make bad decisions about local affairs.

“Council” comes from concilium, the Latin word for an assembly or convocation of clever people: con- (‘together’) + calare (‘to summon’).

A council is not, ever, a legal adviser: not even a mediocre one. That fellow is your counsel. This also comes from Latin: consilium (“consultation, advice”), and the verb consulere (“to consult”).

An old, self-regarding and well-paid lawyer sometimes get to be a general counsel. A whole collection of these exotic birds of paradise in the same place (it will have to be a swanky venue indeed) is called an adoration.

Lawyers (especially mediocre ones) will laugh up their sleeves at you should you suggest the need to go and seek council’s advice. A council never gave sensible advice to anyone. Okay, okay, you might say your average counsel isn’t much better.

But actually, what a cool name for a law firm: the Legal Council. Imagine how much unintentional/subliminal work they’d get. A bit like a band called EXIT or PUSH PUSH (yes I'm looking at you, Mikey Havoc) or a motel that names itself purely to get the first entry in the yellow pages: Like the Aabaalea motel in Christchurch New Zealand.

Also, a likely, if tedious, name for the in-house rock band at a magic circle law firm. Having been in one of those, let me tell you how cool they are. Or maybe I can just let you imagine.

See also

• It’s Isder not Eye-ess-dee-aye
• Swap does not rhyme with crap

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