The picture is one of two genre scenes with legal associations that Leighton exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1878. The other, A Flaw in the Title, which is somewhat smaller (24 x 36in.), is now in the collection of Victorian paintings at the Royal Holloway College, having been bought by Thomas Holloway at Christie's in April 1883. Together they represent Leighton's debut at the RA, where he was to exhibit for over forty years, and both are very much the work of a young artist, pulling out all the stops and eager to show his mettle. They received well-earned praise from the press. Henry Blackburn singled them out as 'remarkable', and the art critic of The Times wrote of our picture that it was 'worthy of notice for the self-restraint' with which the artist had avoided the 'besetting fault' of so many genre paintings - 'two strong a smack of the stage.' The comment by the Illustrated London News on A Flaw in the Title applies equally well to our picture: 'the faces are limned with well-nigh Holbein-like minuteness; and the details of furniture and drapery are all handled with exact care; but the general effect of the work is, nevertheless, broad and powerful; and the chiaroscuro is, in particular, luminous and well balanced' (quoted in Jeannic Chapel, Victorian Taste: The complete catalogue of paintings at the Royal Holloway College, 1982, p.105, under no.37).