‘Today’s drink-driving hearings are brought to you by Gethomesafely Ltd personal breathalysers.’

Excuse our flippancy, and it will be infinity and a day before that message is broadcast across an HM Courts Service public address system. One hopes. But our disclosure this week that commercial advertising is being allowed into magistrates’ courts does fire the imagination.

Private company Executive Legal has been given permission to install advertising boards and charge local law firms £424 a year to display their business cards.

There appears to be a lot wrong with this. First, law firms that opt out of this ‘service’ will be placed at a competitive disadvantage that is unrelated to their efficacy and competence as solicitors.

So what?, you may ask, bigger firms can afford to advertise – that’s life. But what is especially worrying is that unsophisticated potential clients might reasonably assume that public display of the solicitor’s card within the court precincts amounts to an official endorsement – which of course it does not.

In any case, if HMCS is so concerned about making sure clients are provided with solicitors’ cards it can make them available itself at no charge.

Then there is the broader point: courts are places for the dispensation of justice, not vulgar commerce, are they not?