LEGAL BRIEFS A Lawyer’s Quotation Book <i> edited by James Charlton (McGraw-Hill: $8.95,illustrated)</i> : THE OXFORD BOOK OF LEGAL ANECDOTES <i> edited by Michael Gilbert (Oxford University Press: $9.95) </i>

These two anthologies cover the spectrum of opinion about lawyers and the law, from Shakespeare’s “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” (“Henry VI”) to W. S. Gilbert’s “The law is the true embodiment/Of everything that’s excellent./It has no kind of fault or flaw” (“Iolanthe”). Charlton has collected dozens of one-line zingers from Americans, including Robert Preston’s comment: “It was so cold one day last February that I saw a lawyer with his hands in his own pockets.” The anecdotes in the Oxford Book run to two- or three- page accounts of the witty statements of late 19th- and 20th-Century barristers and judges. Either book would make a nice thank-you gift for an attorney who succeeds in extricating you from the tar pits of the American legal system.