Not many solicitors sympathise with the financial 'plight' of barristers, so news that family counsel are to get a pay rise and that criminal law barristers have provoked a review of the very high-cost cases scheme has left them scratching their heads over where they went wrong.

Legal aid solicitors have after all been complaining about these issues for ages - to no avail - and many of them would put much of the blame for the rising budget firmly on the shoulders of QCs.

Obiter can now reveal the secret of the barristers' success, after overhearing a high-up official from the Department for Constitutional Affairs last week.

'The NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) has nothing on them,' he grumbled.

Solicitors might now be left pondering whether they could achieve the same triumph through the threat of their own picket line outside the Royal Courts of Justice.