Having spent the afternoon hearing how the British government is undermining the right to custodial legal advice by reducing lawyers’ fees, Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve, took to the stage to cheer up delegates at the Law Society’s conference on legal advice at the police station last week.

Stafford Smith began: ‘If you think it’s bad here, it’s worse in America’. He recounted tales of a defence lawyer who fell asleep during his client’s capital trial, another who got banged up because he was drunk – but that time in the cells was the only time he spoke to his client. He also told of a third-year law student representing a man on trial for his life, whose first words to the judge were: ‘Can I have a moment to compose myself – I’ve never been in a courtroom before.’ Stafford Smith went on to recount ridiculous US Supreme Court decisions. One determined that proving your innocence was not relevant to appealing a death sentence, so long as your trial was fair. Another upheld a custodial sentence for a man jailed for consensual oral sex with his wife in private. ‘This is the sort of insanity that goes on in the US,’ he said. But he also questioned some practices on this side of the pond. Why can’t we talk to jurors, he asked, and why does a defendant (who is supposedly presumed innocent) sit in a dock, rather than next to his lawyer? Then when it comes to cash, British criminal lawyers may think they’re paid badly, but it turns out they are positively well-heeled compared with their US colleagues. Stafford Smith said he once received $1,000 for a capital case which involved 680 lawyer hours, amounting to $1.47 an hour (92p). He sued under the federal minimum wage laws and won.