Solicitor and journalist Gary Jacobs is one of a rare breed - a lawyer who is loved by the public.

He receives as many as 300 letters a week as a result of the appearances he regularly makes on a variety of media platforms.Every Thursday, Mr Jacobs has a column in The Mirror - Justice with Jacobs - and a live phone-in slot on Talk Radio.

He has also contributed to many television programmes, including Good Morning with Anne and Nick, and is currently presenting his own series - Jacobs' Justice - on the digital channel Carlton World.

His approach to the law is not that of a typical solicitor.

For example, the picture which looms above The Mirror column shows the 53-year-old solicitor in a judge's wig, open-mouthed and mid-rant, dispatching on-the-hoof justice with a stabbing finger.A recent Talk Radio show sees Mr Jacobs in typically-robust form.

First up is Christine from Chertsey who recently rushed her daughter into hospital for an emergency operation after she swallowed a piece of metal which had been embedded in a pre-prepared meal.

Can she sue? 'I don't think you've got a chance,' he says, and the explains the difficulty of proving the metal was from the food and not from elsewhere.

Another caller wants to know what she can do about a crooked tour operator which she has been pursuing for years following a nightmare holiday.

Without missing a beat, he asks: 'What do you want, cash or cheque?', before recommending that she bankrupt the operator.

When British Telecom last monitored the show there were more than 4,000 attempts by callers to get through every hour.Speaking after the phone-in, he described the show as 'more of a performance' than being about providing legal advice.

'I am concerned with the justice of a situation rather than giving a precise definition of the law,' he explains.

'People often don't understand definitions of the law any more than I as a lawyer and others [lawyers] do.'Clearly it is a performance he enjoys, and he is still savouring an earlier on-air clash with Neil H amilton.

The former MP was talking on the day that Mohammed Fayed's application for a British passport was turned down by the Home Secretary Jack Straw, and is suing the owner of Harrods for libel.

A heated exchange followed when Mr Jacobs became concerned that Mr Hamilton was using Talk Radio as a platform.

The solicitor is not at all concerned by the sparring.

'I love all that,' he says.

'People need to be put in their place.'The same philosophy applies to his own colleagues in the law, he says.

The profession is full of 'tarts', he jokes, and he says that with 36 years practising as a solicitor at the 'grassroots' behind him, he is qualified to put them in their place.Talking to aggrieved clients on the radio show, he says he often thinks: 'Why on earth did the losing lawyers ever think they had a valid argument?' He says: 'Justice tells you they didn't, yet two sets of lawyers earn their fees which is why I make the statements I do'.A particular bug-bear for Mr Jacobs is lawyers representing insurers who do 'whatever they can to prolong issues, delay proceedings, [and] wear down the plaintiffs'.

Litigation law is based on who is the cleverest, smartest and the most canny, he maintains, and not trying to achieve justice for an individual who has suffered.But Mr Jacobs insists that he does not go out of his way to knock lawyers.

'I think we provide an important service and I'm very disappointed with the way during the years that the government and the Law Society have allowed the ability to provide that service to be attacked,' he says.His own entry into the legal profession came after an encounter with the law as a 16-year-old selling hot dogs on Petticoat Lane market in London's east end.

He was mistakenly accused of inciting a fight and taken to a police station.

In fact, he claims that he alerted the police in the first place when the fight broke out, however that only came to light when he stood accused in juvenile court.

The case was thrown out, but his solicitor, seeing the distress of the young client, took him on a tour of the law courts and the Old Curiosity Shop to cheer him up.

He also offered him a job as a legal clerk.Mr Jacobs qualified as a solicitor 12 years later, and in the intervening years had a brush with cancer and passed his A levels.

He started his own practice in 1978 in Ilford, north east London, now known as Gary Jacobs Mehta & Co, which specialises in criminal defence, child care and family work.

At the beginning of 1999, he sold the equity in the firm but remains a consultant.

'And I'm still waiting to be consulted,' he jokes.Mr Jacobs might have left day-to-day practice but he still has strong views about it, especially as his son is a trainee solicitor.

He fears for his son's future because he has chosen to work in a general high street practice and not opted for the City.

In his Mirror column he recently passed judgment on the government's Access to Justice Bill.

'Wise up, Derry.

You've got it terribly wrong' was his concluding message to the Lord Chancellor.

In particular, the removal of legal aid from personal injury cases, he says, is an 'absolute disgrace' and a potential disaster for the profession.He cites the hypothetical example of a solicitor who turns down a case because he is not prepared to do it on conditional fees.

Three years later, the rejected client reads in a newspaper that someone who suffered an identical injury has been awarded £100,000.

'The next thing you know they are going to sue you for negligence for the advice you have given .

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because you had a duty of care to tell them whether they had a chance or not.'According to Mr Jacobs there is no other profession where people would take on work and risk that they would not get paid at the end of it.

'The only people that do that are Ladbrokes,' he says.

'It's turned us into a load of bookies.'