Personal touch

Some people have more time on their hands than is good for them, Obiter suspects.

Dr Peter Gray, a GP and former barrister, has begun a campaign to persuade solicitors to sign their letters personally, rather than with the name of their firm.

Now, we have sympathy with the idea, which is surely a small element of good client care, but Dr Gray is perhaps unduly worked up by this rather arcane practice.

'There are over 80,000 solicitors on the Roll,' he fumes.

'Suppose each solicitor works for 46 weeks per year and sends five anonymous letters each working day, and the recipient of each letter spends on average ten seconds tracing the author of the letter (by decoding the file reference number, phoning the secretary etc; it will often take much longer than ten seconds).

This would mean that over 255,000 expensive man-hours of professional time are wasted each year identifying anonymous solicitors.' A copy of the Plain English Campaign's letter writing guide to the reader who can say how much time people waste starting campaigns on unimportant issues.