Free at last - or the end of the world as we know it?

One subject, predictably, has dominated the news this week.

Depending on who you listen to, the implementation of the Human Rights Act was either the start of a glorious era in British justice, or the end of the world as we know it.

Not for the first time, the Daily Mail (2 October) led the global meltdown brigade, predicting that this 'misguided Act' would cause 'legal chaos' across the land and result in a 'bonanza' for lawyers, singling out Cherie Booth QC as a 'major beneficiary'.

The Independent on Sunday (1 October) agreed that the Act would be 'nice work for QCs', with an 'expected 100m in fees in the next year alone'.

However, its sister paper took a kinder view (Independent, 2 October), with the grandiose declaration in an editorial that 'today the people of the United Kingdom are free at last'.

Perhaps the most heartfelt endorsement of the Act came from Geoffrey Robertson QC in The Guardian, who urged the courts to apply the Act 'in the spirit of John Wilkes and Thomas Paine' and, more surprisingly, AA Milne.

The Guardian went to town on the Act, devoting most of its front page to it.

An editorial in The Times sat nicely on the fence, warning that the Act should be 'closely watched' for its 'disruptive potential', while the Daily Telegraph - despite predictions of 'a field day for crackpots and a gold mine for lawyers' - eventually settled there too, describing the Act as an 'engine of uncertainty'.

However, the final word on the Human Rights Act goes to Marcel Berlins, writing in The Guardian (2 October).

Joyously celebrating the Act with his usual wit - the competition to be first lawyer to move a Human Rights Act point will be fierce, he warned - he felt moved to compose a poem: 'Incorporating the European Convention/Is more important that getting a pension/Because the pension promised by Brown will only be worth 90 quid/Whereas on damages under the Human Rights Act there's no lid.'

The legal personality story of last week was that of solicitor Dixit Shah, who was accused of embezzling his clients' property deposits - either 15 million (The Sun, 27 September; News of the World 'Exclusive', 1 October) or 6 million (Daily Express 25 September; Daily Mail, 27 September) - and swiftly absconding to India.

Confusingly, the London Evening Standard initially reported the amount allegedly taken as 15 million (25 September), but when it tracked Mr Shah to his 'lavish' Bombay apartment (29 September), the amount had been reduced to 6 million, the loss of which Mr Dixit was said to have described as 'entirely coincidental' with his move abroad.

Whatever the exact amount, the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors pronounced the alleged fraud in The Sun as 'the legal equivalent of the Great Train Robbery'.

The Times (27 September) reported on less profitable occupations, namely being a lawyer at the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

It is advertising for eight solicitors and barristers with 'relevant experience', offering salaries of 29,000.

With big City law firms struggling to attract graduates with 40,000 plus offers, 'if you have ever wondered why the SFO never seems to be able to catch anyone,' The Times said, 'wonder no more'.

The Financial Times (2 October) interviewed Janet Paraskeva, the new chief executive of the 'embattled' Law Society, where she claims that reform will take 'two and a half, three years' to come to fruition.

The article described her post as 'one of the least enviable in the legal profession'.

Ms Paraskeva acknowledged that 'there may be a couple of difficult months ahead' but emphasised her belief that 'the Society has an important role in the future, as well as the past'.

Elsewhere, the Daily Mail reported that a 'home sharer' law giving property rights to unmarried couples may be introduced (26 September).

And The Guardian focused onEducation law as a growth area, reporting that 'a sharpening of everyone's sense of being consumers has changed the landscape', and resulted in 'everyone having a pop at schools and hiring lawyers to help them' (26 September).

Victoria MacCallum