Why does the Law Society need to spend £450,000 on a national advertising campaign? Surely all we need to do is follow the example of our colleagues in the surveyor's profession and utilise the logo of our representative body. We all like the Law Society's logo. Your correspondents repeatedly lament its passing with regard to their practising certificates, which, since the advent of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, I have seen (rightly) compared to food hygiene certificates.


The Law Society has of course always jealously guarded its logo and refused permission to [its membership] to use it in our publicity material. Accordingly, we are left trying to explain to our clients the difference between a solicitor and an unregulated 'lawyer'. At least we used to be able to say that we were 'regulated by the Law Society', thereby providing some sort of indication that we belonged to a common, respected organisation. However, even that has now gone, to be replaced by the vapid, tautologous phrase 'regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority'. There is no marketing value in that. Why is our representative body so unwilling to acknowledge its own membership and, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, is such a club one to which we really want to belong?



Logos are important - a picture paints a thousand words. Why does the Law Society continue to disown us and how does it have the nerve to assert, at the same time, that it wishes to promote the solicitors' brand? Let us use the Law Society's logo as a common standard, and save £450,000 into the bargain.



Dermot Burke, Bells, Farnham