I just learned of the death of John P. Sinnott, Esq. of Valdosta, Georgia. Mr. Sinnott didn’t know me, but I and other lawyers who have wrestled with chain legalization and the other nuts and bolts of preparing public documents for use abroad know him as the author of A Practical Guide to Document Authentication, one of the truly useful law books for practitioners. In the endless war of words between academics and practicing lawyers on the relative merits of different kinds of legal scholarship, Mr. Sinnott’s book is a strong answer to anyone who would look down his nose at mere doctrine or works on the nuts and bolts of a very specialized nook in the law. It may not been a work of high jurisprudence; it may not have garnered many citations in scholarly footnotes; but it guided many practicing lawyers through the thicket of practical legalization of documents and in the process saved their clients time and money. If it was a parvum opus, it was small in the way that a pocket Baedeker is small. Small but handy. Small but detailed. I have used it many times and am grateful to have it.

Mr. Sinnott was of counsel to Langdale Vallotton, LLP and was a colonel (retired) in the U.S. Army Reserve. He is survived by his wife, Rose, and by children and grandchildren.