Press slam criminal justice and revel in lap club lawyer

It was a bad week in the media for lawyers, with insults and scurrilous stories flying faster than a Spearmint Rhino lap-dancer's G-string.Sir John Stevens, commissioner of the Metropolitan police and the country's most senior police officer, launched a stinging attack on Britain's 'appalling criminal justice system' (Express, 7 March) last week - a definition which, of course, included lawyers who 'ride roughshod over the rights of terrified victims and intimidate witnesses'.

Courts, according to Sir John, not only 'encourage crime' but also 'treat victims with utter contempt', with lawyers and judges colluding in 'an uneven game of tactics played out in front of an unin-formed jury with the disillusioned victims and a bemused defendant looking on'.Most newspapers seemed to support the commissioner, with The Times admitting that 'Sir John said much that rings true' (8 March).

The Sun went further, calling him '100 per cent right' (7 March), and claiming that he 'echoed the views of us all' by 'telling the sorry story of Britain's justice system as it really is' - which is, apparently, 'a sick joke'.It was left to The Guardian to strike a blow on behalf of beleaguered court officials and lawyers everywhere by dismissing much of the speech as 'unimpressive', 'nonsense' and a 'political knockabout' (8 March).Although acknowledging 'the lack of care that victims and court witnesses receive', the paper concluded that 'the idea that the system has gone soft is nonsense'.The other legal story gripping the nation - or at least the gossip pages - was the affair of the City lawyer, the champagne-fuelled Thames cruise and the lap-dancing club.

Smirks were stifled across town as news emerged that 'a partner at Clifford Chance has sent an e-mail apology to his colleagues for taking a party of four journalists to a lap-dancing club' (Daily Telegraph, 8 March).

The emporium in question - Spearmint Rhino on the Tottenham Court Road - was visited by the partner (and four journalists) after a Thames river cruise for the press.However, support emerged from an unlikely source.

The Evening Standard reported suggestions that the leaking of the story was rather inappropriate (7 March), and Tatler editor Nicola Formby also wrote in the Standard in defence of the shame-faced lawyer, asking 'what's wrong with lap-dancing?' (8 March).She professed herself 'very surprised' that the lawyer 'had been forced into a humiliating apology', and admitted that 'while I'm not a regular at the poles, I have been to Spearmint Rhino and Stringfellows, and every time I watch those girls slide up and down or gyrate six inches away from my nose, I rather enjoy it.'And to conclude on more sedate matters, The Independent readers seem strangely fascinated by lawyers and their historical depiction in literature (see [2002] Gazette, 7 March, 10).

The debate continued on the letters page last week with Gary Slapper, professor of law at the Open University, wading into the fray by quoting Cicero, 'himself a lawyer, who attacked lawyers for thinking too much of themselves, and for their quibbling and verbosity' (The Independent, 4 March).

We await next week's instalment with bated breath.

Victoria MacCallum