On brevity:

"According to the court, counsel were lucky that the discipline [for writing an excessively lengthy complaint] was not akin to that meted out by the chancellor in 1596 who 'decided to make an example of a particularly prolix document filed in his court. The chancellor first ordered a hole cut through the center of the document, all 120 pages of it. Then he ordered that the person who wrote it should have his head stuffed through the hole, and the unfortunate fellow was lead around to be exhibited to all those attending court at Westminster Hall.'"