I have just had a nightmare.I dreamed that I was at a Lord Chancellor's reception.

The wine was flowing freely and I had had more than my fair share.

Someone jokingly asked me for a suggestion that would 'ginger up the lawyers' and I proposed that there be league tables for solicitors.

As I reached for another drink I expanded on this.

'Just think what fun it would be.

The Law Societ y will be so busy dealing with the league that it will have no time to criticise the government.

You will be able to abolish the presumption of innocence without anyone noticing.'Everyone laughed heartily and I left the reception thinking that at least I had brought some levity into the drab lives of the Lord Chancellor's officials.The nightmare really began when a few days later I read that this was being taken seriously.

I hoped no one would mention my name.

I even had my defence prepared.

'It was only a joke,' I was going to say.

As defences go, it was not a very good one.As jokes go, league tables of solicitors is a good one.

If we have league tables then we will have to have knock-out cups and competitions.

On a warm summer's afternoon we will listen to Christopher Martin-Jenkins on the smooth delivery of questions in a civil case.

Bill McLaren will deal with the rough and tumble of violent crime.

'And it's lovely spoiling play from Jeremy Truscott QC as he confuses the defence yet again.'Who will be the first senior partner to explain that he is as sick as a parrot at having been demoted from the Old Bailey Premiership to the Peckham Magistrates Court League? Can we expect clean sporting contests or will the Liverpool courts become a bloodbath?Thankfully, my nightmare is only partly true.

I did not make the suggestion of league tables for lawyers but the Lord Chancellor is taking it seriously.

Perhaps this should come as no surprise to us.

The government is obsessed with tables and lists; tabulating without thinking, the prerogative of the train spotter through the ages.There is nothing wrong with league tables.

But the prerequisite of any league table is objective information such as negligence claims records.

It is specious to talk of publishing solicitors records of whether they win their cases or not.

Save for a relatively small percentage of cases, the vast majority are settled on terms which both sides will claim as victory.It has been suggested that in criminal cases, the average sentences can be published as tables.

The public will be able to see that convicted clients of firm A get on average an immediate prison sentence of three years whereas if they go to firm B, the average is a £200 fine.

This will not take into account that firm A deals with serious crime very skilfully and firm B only deals with the odd careless driving case.I have only acted for one client accused of murder.

He received a hospital order, and was released after about 18 months.

This is an impressive but misleading average.It is impossible to assess solicitors on the basis of conviction rates as even the simplest cases have a multiplicity of charges and indictments.

Many are dropped voluntarily by the prosecution before the case even comes to trial.

Are these to count as victories for the defence?And even if all the results were collated, they would still be meaningless because solicitor A might persuade everyone to plead guilty thus giving her an excellent overall result with her one trial and one acquittal.

Solicitor B who has an excellent reputation tends to attract the more difficult cases.

His conviction rate will be much worse than solicitor A.Civil cases are even more difficult to assess in terms of winning and losing.

Even something as straightforward as a running down action may be regarded as a victory by both sides.

The plaintiff will be satisfied because he has recovered damages of £5000.

The defendant insurance company may be very relieved that the award was not substantially higher and congratulate its solicito rs on a good result.As some 87% of personal injury plaintiffs recover damages, those firms with a plaintiffs practice will appear to be much better than those firms which act almost exclusively for defendants.

The disparity will be even worse if one looks at the success rate of those firms with substantial debt-collecting practices.

Save for the odd case where they sue the wrong person as a result of a computer error, they will have a success rate that appears to be nearly 100%.

Are they to be regarded as much better than a firm which specialises in difficult judicial review cases?The Lord Chancellor will no doubt argue that all the problems can be overcome by having different categories of case.

He will be surprised to find out how much debt collecting suddenly becomes commercial work.

There are some who will cheat when it comes to filling in returns showing the winning and losing ratios.

It will therefore be necessary to have independent verification of the returns.

This will only be possible by inspecting every file and the Lord Chancellor's Department will have to expand to the size of the National Health Service in order to do the work.While we are at it we will need a league table for Lord Chancellors.

On his performance so far, the Lord Chancellor will need some favourable results if he is to stand any chance of getting into the second division.