I remember once addressing a group of German lawyers.

One asked me whether having two doctorates rather than one would be more helpful in obtaining a job in the City of London.

In that question lurked a world of difference towards intellectual life and the status of academic attainment.

How could I break the news to him that there would be suspicion in the City that even one doctorate would make him unfit for what are seen as the practical qualities required for being a City lawyer?

In some countries, lawyers often have doctorates and are called Dr.

In some countries, nearly only academic study is required for being a lawyer, rather than our own almost even split between the practical and the academic.

The moves towards the Bologna Process in university education, reflecting the UK’s split between a bachelor’s and master’s degree, have been criticised by some on the continent as attacking their more academic tradition.

Recently, the Law Society – so far as I know alone in Europe – complained that there were too many academics on a European Commission group of experts on European contract law.

It is well known that England in particular has a non-intellectual, or some would say anti-intellectual, approach towards problems.

We are supposed to be pragmatists, and indeed the proof of this is that nearly every point I shall make in this article will be through anecdote rather than elaboration of principle.

I see at every CCBE meeting the difference in expression by delegations.

For instance, the French will announce in advance the number of points they will make, whether they are principles or just remarks, and then proceed logically through them, whereas the British will focus on what works and doesn’t work and make a joke.

As a British person once commented to me, we puzzle the rest of Europe because we seem to start in the middle rather than at the beginning.

Neither approach is better, but each is symptomatic of a different way of thinking.

I have a serious point to make.

As lawyers, our approach to academic contribution is different to that in other countries.

There is, in my experience, much less crossover between the academic and the practitioner worlds.

There is a separation and almost a distrust, as if neither has much to teach the other.

And then there is the question of money, where from the time of Mrs Thatcher onwards, if not before, the remuneration of academics has been scandalously low, giving little incentive for a move from practitioners in their direction, and doubtless having some effect, however wrongly based, on the status of academics.

By way of difference, on the continent, many of the leading lawyers – a far higher proportion in my experience than the few who do this in the UK – also teach regularly at their local university.

(Indeed, my opposite number as head of the European accountants does the same.)

Is that a disregard for the specialism of academic teaching and research, or a recognition of the necessity that the one feeds into the other?

In the US, the American Bar Association’s 2020 Commission, about which I have written before, and which is doing highly practical (and not academic) work on the review of conduct rules, has three full-time academics among its 13 members, and both its chairs also teach or taught at universities.

Compare this with the recent announcement by the SRA, Bar Standards Board and ILEX as to the chairmanship (not membership) of their Education and Training Review, actually looking into academic issues: Dame Janet Gaymer, practitioner, and Sir Mark Potter, judge and former practitioner.

I am certainly not questioning the distinction or suitability of either, but merely pointing out the difference in approach.

I am aware that these are not watertight, black-and-white matters.

(Indeed, as an example of such seepage, I see from Dame Janet’s CV that she has had in her long and distinguished career as a practitioner a connection for a time with Nottingham University and is currently a governor of the London School of Economics – although it is not clear whether she has ever taught.)

Nor is it possible to counter easily the traditions leading to this approach to intellectual life in the UK.

It is something which goes well beyond the law, well beyond the present time, and is sunk deep into the English psyche.

As just one current example among many from the wider world, is it possible to consider that any English intellectual would ever have had such an influence on political direction as that of Bernard-Henri Levy, who recently seemed to have been the main cause behind Nicolas Sarkozy taking an early and leading role in bombing Libya?

You are probably revolted by the thought of an unelected intellectual playing such a role, but that will just confirm you as an anti-intellectual English pragmatist.

The main question is whether our approach harms us, either in the absence of academics from the practice of law, or in the absence of practitioners from the study and teaching of law.

I cannot speak for areas of UK law as to whether they are better or worse as a result, but like a true pragmatist will answer from my own experience.

My own years of academic study fell into place and made real sense only when I joined the Citizens Advice Bureau and was confronted by real people with real problems.

And our work in the CCBE representing practitioners through their member bars is assisted by the work of academics who study us – interestingly, they come mainly from the US, sometimes from Germany, but rarely if ever from the UK, which brings me back to where I began.

Jonathan Goldsmith is secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents around a million European lawyers through its member bars and law societies. He blogs weekly for the Gazette on European affairs