President's 'rape of criminal law' charge rouses press

The Law Society's S2K conference gained an impressive amount of column inches this week, with almost all the broadsheets focusing on different issues.

The Telegraph (5 November) went for President Michael Napier's headline-grabbing accusation that the government was 'raping the private practice of criminal law', and using 'seductive language' to persuade solicitors to join the salaried defender service.

Equally controversially, The Times (6 November) focused on the revelation that solicitors were 'poised to take industrial action' over the Lord Chancellor's refusal to raise legal aid fees.

The unlikely image of placard-waving solicitors was ever closer, apparently, with Mr Napier warning that solicitors would 'vote with their feet' and that a 'watershed moment' was not far off.

Watersheds seem to be more alien to members of the Bar.

Further to Lord Woolf's shock non-wigged state when announcing his verdict on the Bulger killer sentences (as reported in The Telegraph, 31 October, and The Times, 31 October), barristers have unsurprisingly decided to err on the side of tradition, and continue wearing their headgear.

According to The Times (31 October), wigs are seen as 'a formal sign of the status and importance of the advocate', and are particularly popular with the 'young and women practitioners'.

One - presumably wigged - barrister wrote in criticism of his own profession this week, slamming the 'cosy cartel' of the barrister-solicitor relationship, which he said may well be 'more a case of self-interest than public interest' (The Guardian, 4 November).

According to the author, the referral process is 'outdated', and 'the argument that these rules serve anyone other than lawyers is disingenuous if not dishonest'.

Not all was doom and gloom under wigs this week, however.

The Daily Mail reported on the heart-warming tale of 'the couple going courting all over again' (3 November).

Following her appointment this week, Adele Williams and her husband Andrew Patience are one of a 'handful' of married couples practising as Crown Court judges simultaneously.

'Settling family arguments,' observed the Mail, 'must be a breeze.'

Finally, spare a thought for magistrates, who are apparently so in awe of 'long-winded lawyers' and 'repetitive solicitors' that they are being given assertiveness training, as reported by The Independent (2 November).

The initiative - devised by the Magistrates Association - stresses the importance of eye contact, and encourages harassed magistrates to 'address transgressors as an adult might talk to a naughty child'.

Suggestions that solicitors be made to stay behind until they learn how to behave properly were apparently dismissed as unworkable.

Victoria MacCallum