Verdict from the prosecutor

Former judge Greg Woods reviews Frank & Fearless a memoir by former NSW DPP Nicholas Cowdery ... Policy intervention on drugs and mandatory sentencing ... Prosecutor in the Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Lionel Murphy cases ... Symmetry with Murphy's progressive views ... Salvos from the mothball fleet ... The Gordon Wood case ... Law reform 

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Trying to make prosecutors sexy

Lawyer, rigger, runner, stagehand, actress and screenwriter ... Creator of Janet King ... A pitch for marriage equality ... Legal drama powered by family strife and prosecutorial tensions ... Parenting imperfectly ... Exaggerated reality ... Gudrun Willcocks catches-up with Jane Allen beachside  

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How to ask a question

Peter Lyons book Advocacy - A Practical Guide ... Reviewed by Paul Hardman ... Helping judges come to the right decision ... Loved by Lord Pannick ... Techniques from the leading lights ... Presentation skills ... Preparation ... From the author of the best-selling Not One Jot 

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Spilling the beans

Official Secrets ... Whistleblowing at its finest ... The GCHQ operative who got a memo from the NSA into the hands of The Observer ... The right to know about the invasion of Iraq and its illegality ... Coalition of the Willing and the missing weapons of mass destruction ... Miss Lumière enjoys a high-minded leak in the public interest 

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The small stuff of words

Pedro Almodóvar and Antonio Banderas at their peak ... Pain and Glory reviewed by Miss Lumière ... Life, loves, memories, and loss ... An artist's reckoning of a life lived 

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Black holes

Senator Feinstein and her torture report starring dogged Daniel Jones ... Huckster psychologists and crook lawyers combine to trash the Geneva Conventions and civilised standards ... The battle to avoid redactions ... No accountability ... The Senate v the CIA ... Miss Lumière reviews The Report 

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I am woman - hear me roar

At the Feminist Legal Clinic, Gudrun Willcocks meets Anna Kerr, a different kind of lawyer ... Matriarchy takes on the patriarchy ... Wages for wives would see a reduction in domestic violence ... The outsider working on the inside ... Discrimination and motherhood ... A bandaid service at the Family Court 

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Drugs, money and death

The brutality of the drug business in Columbia ... From the directors who brought us Embrace of the Serpent comes Birds of Passage ... America, the greedy satan ... Complex codes of honour ... Sumptuous and gripping ... Peace and war ... Miss Lumière reviews the spectacle  

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Our own heart of darkness

Colonial Tasmania ... Jennifer Kent's new film takes us deep into our dark past ... Fearless Irish servant girl teams up with Aboriginal boy to hunt down their tormentors ... Our violent history revealed ... As our reviewer Miss Lumière discovers - there will be blood  

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Beautiful Palm Beach ... don't go there

Palm Beach, directed by Rachel Ward and starring the usual suspects ... Sponsored by the NSW government, so you know what to expect ... The stars phone it in ... Miss Lumière hacks the celluloid to pieces 

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