I was not surprised by the comments in your recent article regarding immigration lawyers reeling about the immigration accreditation scheme (see [2005] Gazette, 10 February, 18). Surely if someone is a qualified solicitor then that person should be exempt from having to get accredited.


I see no justification for these exams, which are costly and time-consuming and simply a waste of the taxpayers' money. It seems that immigration lawyers are being singled out and made to sit these exams or give up publicly funded work altogether. It is a sad state of affairs and I see no evidence of such a scheme to cover other areas of law.


In fact the only argument that those who agree with accreditation come up with is that there are a lot of bad advisers about. I sat the accreditation exams in November 2004 and passed all of them at level 2. Presumably this means I am a good adviser and not a cowboy solicitor.


If the Legal Services Commission is aware of so many bad advisers, then why doesn't it pounce on those particular individuals and take away their contracts on the basis that the advice that they are dishing out is shoddy, instead of wasting everybody else's time?


Vinod Sharma, Sharma & Co, Ilford, Essex