Not all fat catsYour article on 'Solicitors' prosperity reaches new heights' (see [2000] Gazette, 14 April, 1) makes depressing reading for a legal aid practitioner.

The average sole practitioner is earning less than 7% of the top earner.That may be the choice (to an extent) of the sole practitioner, but many solicitors (sole practitioners or not) have no choice.

We want to assist those who need help and we are willing to do so under what remains of the legal aid scheme.

Our rates of pay are fixed.No wonder Lord Irvine thinks that solicitors can subsidise legal aid when top earners receive more than 300,000; but in practice this does not always happen.

Those of us with specialist practices - whether doing crime, immigration, welfare benefits or, as in my case, family and child law - have very little choice.

A substantial proportion of our fee-earning time is spent on legally aided work.

Our clients benefit from the expertise thereby developed.

The government continues to down-value what we do.I don't ask to be paid anything like a 'fat cat' salary.

I suspect that I should find the work involved of no interest in any event.

I do ask that legal aid practitioners be seen by the Lord Chancellor as a totally separate breed of lawyer and that they be paid fairly.How long would the NHS last if doctors and consultants were paid at the same rate per hour as the legal aid practitioner? If the analogy is false, let the Lord Chancellor please explain why.David Burrows, David Burrows, Bristol