LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

HALF A SHIRT, ANYONE?

Half-way down Chancery Lane there is small shop where one is able to purchase a rather fine tunic shirt in cotton poplin for the sum of 46.50.

Those unable to make the journey to the centre of London may be comforted by the knowledge that, for the same price, they can purchase the services of a criminal barrister wearing the same shirt.

Ponder, if you will, the consequences of a criminal justice system which compels often very experienced criminal advocates, for the Crown as well as the defence, to attend a Crown Court - after probably several hours of reading through witness statements and interview transcripts - for such a miserly sum.

That sum begins to look even more modest when it is seen that half of it - sometimes more - will have to go towards defraying chambers' expenses and clerks' fees, not to mention subscriptions to the General Council of the Bar, professional indemnity insurance, travel and tax.

That 20 years' training and experience is going for such a song may well cause the criminal bar to wonder whether the Lord Chancellor is trying to have the shirt (or at least the half it can afford) off its back.

A society in which fundamental freedoms are so clearly predicated on the right to be protected from summary and unjustified detention must in some small way have its foundations embedded in the unadulterated right of access to free and competent legal representation.

Since the Crown Prosecution Service is also charged, in some measure, with the responsibility of protecting the rights of those unfortunate enough to find themselves in the teeth of the criminal justice machinery, this principle must apply equally to the Crown as to the defence.

It is certainly time that the very branch of the legal profession that is designed to avail those most in need be recognised and rewarded for its efforts.

No fat-cat salaries or enormous hikes of the kind enjoyed by the first and second in command of the system are sought; just a living wage for an honest job - because I for one can say, in the words of the Mamas and Papas, 'Ain't no one getting fat 'cept Mama Cass' ...not on 46.50 at any rate.

Imran Mahmood, barrister, 5 Pump Court, Temple, London

DON'T PANDER

Sir Stephen Lander's case for 'a customer-friendly OSS' really is palpable navety which is about to run riot (see [2003] Gazette, 27 March, 23).

It is in the nature of the work undertaken by this profession that a solicitor gives independent advice which may not be palatable to the client and which in turn, given the view that 'the customer is always right', means the profession cannot function if it cowers down to the need to please the client with a 'customer-focused and customer-orientated' attitude.

One cannot 'resolve complaints' when the twain - between the customer needing to be given the advice he wants to hear and the reality of the facts - can never meet.

It is a state of reality between the bona fide lawyer and the inevitably self-biased client.

It has always been such a state of affairs and always will be.

To kowtow - or, to use perhaps a more attractive term, 'to resolve' - is to lay the lawyer open to impossible professional stipulations.

Of course there will always be the defaulting solicitor just as there is the unblinkered client, but we are talking about the integrity of a whole of a profession, which must not be compromised by this anaemic kind of thinking.

Nigel Hodson, Hodson-Margetts, Wellingborough, Northmptonshire

NO INTERNATIONAL LAW

I have bad news for Myles Hickey - international law does not exist (see [2003] Gazette, 27 March, 16).

Was Mr Hickey not taught at law school that the essential features of a legal system (as opposed to any other codes, rules or morality) require that it be normative, institutional and ultimately coercive?

When you lay these criteria alongside international law, then, as they say in Arkansas, 'That dog don't hunt.' The concept of international law may be a much-loved rhetorical device in political debate, but let us not kid ourselves that there is anything of real substance in the idea when it runs up against simple power politics.

It never has and never will.

Martin Sewell, solicitor, Gravesend, Kent

HAIR TODAY...

Why does the Gazette's cartoonist Royston always show legal aid practitioners (and now traditional high street solicitors) as unshaven?

Is there a secret message that your readers should regard these practitioners as tramps?

John Barrow, Days, Maidstone, Kent

Contributions

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