I cannot be the only person who is left feeling utterly bemused by the conflicting ideas that have been aired in the Gazette of late.

On the one hand we are being told that ‘Tesco Law’ symbolises the end of the world as we know it. So bad is our predicament, in fact, that to combat it the Law Society has launched an advertising campaign to remind consumers that it is really only we solicitors who are fully qualified to assist with legal issues.

However, on the other hand, it has been proposed by a thinktank that we scrap training contracts and let anybody who finishes the LPC call themselves a solicitor.

I am now a qualified solicitor but it was not so very long ago that I did my LPC and, even though I obtained a distinction, I can tell you now that on leaving the LPC I was not qualified to call myself a solicitor and neither were any of my LPC colleagues. Regardless of how intelligent you are or how good the LPC is, it does not equip you with the real working life experience that you need to do this job.

If the Law Society did actually scrap the training contract and people were able to call themselves solicitors on finishing the LPC, I would suggest that the Law Society might want to change its new slogan to ‘your Solicitor, not really qualified to answer’.

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