In last week's interview, Lord Carter makes three false assumptions.


First, he says that the big commercial firms have embraced modernity and are models of the efficiency he says we should all seek to achieve. He preaches the doctrine that we have all heard before, which is that bigger firms will be able to do the work more cheaply because of these supposed efficiencies. Why then do these efficient commercial firms need to charge hourly fees that are so much higher than ours to make a profit?



Next, he claims that the idea of the dedicated, up-all-night solicitor is not how it seems to him. This ignores the reality of firms having been - for the very commercial reasons he espouses - obliged to cut corners by using 'retired policemen', as he describes them, to cover this already badly paid work. Taking a snapshot of a service already in crisis, and behaving as though what we have is as good as we ought to expect and that we can then somehow squeeze even this poor level of service out of a soon-to-be-even smaller budget, is surely evidence of crass ignorance or intellectual dishonesty on his part.



Third, he suggests that it will be the responsibility of the Law Society to prevent unscrupulous solicitors winning contracts at too low prices and not doing the work properly. Quite apart from the fact that this is him expecting the profession, at its own expense, to pick up the pieces should his proposals prove to be the fiasco we warned him to expect, he ignores that reality of control by our professional body, which is by its nature after the event. In other words, he accepts the risk that some (perhaps, in the short and medium term, many) clients will get a bad service from some providers.



Lord Carter is what the Americans call a bean counter. To him, what matters is not the best result for the individual but the cheapest result for the group. His approach is the antithesis of professional thinking. Since he is essentially just a shopkeeper, albeit a very successful one, we could not have expected more from him.



Peter Ryder, Middlewich, Cheshire