Plot a legend outside of the plotting area in base graphics?

Question

As the title says: How can I plot a legend outside the plotting area when using base graphics?

I thought about fiddling around with layout

Answer 1

I can offer only an example of the layout solution already pointed out.

layout(matrix(c(1,2), nrow = 1), widths = c(0.7, 0.3))
par(mar = c(5, 4, 4, 2) + 0.1)
plot(1:3, rnorm(3), pch = 1, lty = 1, type = "o", ylim=c(-2,2))
lines(1:3, rnorm(3), pch = 2, lty = 2, type="o")
par(mar = c(5, 0, 4, 2) + 0.1)
plot(1:3, rnorm(3), pch = 1, lty = 1, ylim=c(-2,2), type = "n", axes = FALSE, ann = FALSE)
legend(1, 1, c("group A", "group B"), pch = c(1,2), lty = c(1,2))