Your article 'Surviving Hard Times' cannot be allowed to go unanswered for it gives a wholly unbalanced view of the profession between 1953 and 1978 (see [2003] Gazette, 29 August, 22).

I write as a one-time partner of what was then considered to be a medium-sized City law firm.

I have been on the roll for more than 50 years and have seen the profession with lemming-like deliberation destroy almost all of its best features.

In those years, we did our best to know sufficient of the law to advise our clients on all but the most esoteric of their problems.

When these were beyond our expertise, we either sought the knowledge by research, or asked counsel.

One did not pass clients to a 'specialist' among 50 or more partners whose interest in the client was limited to that speciality.

I do not recall enmity between solicitors and barristers such as that to which the article refers.

I owe many a debt of gratitude to members of the bar who were prepared to help me often free of charge quite informally over the telephone.

My partners and I considered that we should if possible all go to lunch together frequently to discuss our clients' problems.

Six seemed a proper maximum to sit round a table.

There can be no doubt that the inordinate number of partners in many firms today is a negation of the concept of partnership.

In all my years in the City, I do not recall a serious complaint being made about my firm's work and I do not think that this was in any way unusual for us or the vast majority of other firms.

Now clients are actively encouraged to complain and inevitably the profession is required to maintain a complaints procedure.

The general standard of communication today is appalling.

If the comment that solicitors were 'traditionally drawn from comfortable middle- class families' is intended to mean that today that is no longer the case, then the corollary can only be that in those days, most solicitors had an education that enabled them to write good quality letters and address their fellow professionals and clients with dignity.

I do hope that those who support my views and have similar views of their own will make these public.

We may yet become again a profession composed of ladies and gentlemen which merits the goodwill of the public.

Henry Dyson, Nice, France