The application of linguistics to legal issues—what some have labelled “forensic linguistics”—has become increasingly common, varied and consequential (see Brackenridge 1981 for a brief overview). Recently, we three served as language experts in Toronto’s first bilingual jury trial (Regina vs. Lapointe and Sicotte, 1981). Since each of us was assigned a different linguistic problem and since our roles were partially adversary ones (two of us worked for the defence and the other for the prosecution), we were able to draw upon a variety of linguistic concepts and analyses as well as to assess their effectiveness when applied to legal issues. The present paper reports not only on the nature of our involvement but, more importantly, on our joint perception of disturbing language-related problems in the legal process and of equally disturbing inadequacies in the responses that linguistics can currently offer to many of these problems.