Marcel Berlins is putting away his microphone after 15 years of presenting BBC Radio 4's 'Law in Action'.

Here, he talks frankly about his career, and Fleet Street's legal correspondents talk about the highs and lows of covering the profession

Marcel Berlins

Career: Born France, qualified as a lawyer in South Africa, further legal studies in France and the London School of Economics.

I drifted into journalism by accident, while working as a civil servant in the Lord Chancellor's Department.

I intended to have a couple of years of fun as a hack and then settle down to make a proper living at the bar.

I never managed to drift back.

I stayed 11 years at The Times as leader writer and legal correspondent, since when I've been freelance - writing and broadcasting (on legal and non-legal themes), and lecturing.

Best scoop: In recent years, revealing the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine's letter inviting barristers, some of whom might be in line for QC or a judicial post, to come to a fund-raising Labour party dinner.

I don't believe Lord Irvine realised the way his invitation would be interpreted, but it was an extraordinarily thoughtless thing to do.

What would be your dream scoop? To prove beyond doubt that the prime minister and the Attorney-General did not really believe that the war against Iraq was lawful.

What is the most important issue(s) facing the profession? The decline in legal aid, coupled with the disappointing 'access to justice' alternatives, resulting in the very existence of solicitors' firms being threatened.

What pleases you about lawyers? Their continuing incorruptibility - standards of behaviour may be slipping, but lawyers in this country are still the most honest in the world.

What irritates you about lawyers? That so many of them are still incapable or unwilling to talk or write about the law and legal matters in language understand-able to non-lawyers.

If not law, what would you like to write about? The cinema.

What do you think Law in Action has achieved? This sounds a little pompous, but I believe that 'Law in Action' has played a part in making the law and the legal system understandable to non-lawyers, who make up well over 90% of the programme's listeners.

I started off with the specific intention of explaining, demystifying and analysing legal issues without using jargon or concepts familiar only to lawyers; and to try to persuade people that the law belongs to them, to all of us, and not just to the select bunch of professionals who make their money from it.

I like to think we've had some success in bringing law closer to the people.

What were the highlights and lowlights of your time presenting it? Surprisingly, a very difficult question.

There were no disasters of any significance, and even the occasional technological failures were relatively minor.

The highlights were some of the countries we visited.

Doing a programme from South Africa, not long after Nelson Mandela's government assumed power, looking at the country's post-apartheid legal future, was one.

Who was the most impressive person you interviewed for it, and why? I've interviewed most of the leading judges, lawyers and politicians connected with the law.

Yet the interview that sticks in my mind was with the mother of a teenager who'd been killed by another youth.

Under a restorative justice scheme, she'd agreed to meet her son's killer.

She movingly described how she was faced with this scared child, and how she found it impossible to hate him.

Why have you left? After 15 highly satisfying years and around 435 programmes, I felt I'd had enough.

There was no particular event precipitating my decision - just a vague feeling that I was seeing the same stories coming round and round again, and that I wasn't able to summon up the enthusiasm I used to have.

What will you be doing in the future? Filling the gap left by 'Law in Action' with more legal (and other) journalism - writing rather than broadcasting - and the writing of two books I've been planning for a long time - one fiction, one not.

Bob Sherwood

Financial Times

Career: I'm the legal correspondent of the Financial Times.

Previously, I was assistant UK news editor at the paper, after spending the first two years at the newspaper as one of the splash subs.

Between 1995 and 1997, I worked in Toronto as a freelance business journalist, speechwriter and photographer, and before that, freelanced at the Daily Star, the Mail on Sunday, the Sunday Express and Today.

In 1992, I started my first job in journalism as a reporter on the Brighton Evening Argus.

I have a degree in English literature from Southampton University and was educated at Reading School.

Best scoop? I suppose the best legal scoop would have to be the Clifford Chance internal memo that revealed a group of US associates warning that their high billing targets left them open to the temptation to pad their recorded hours.

In the wake of that, the firm swiftly changed its ways of dealing with young US lawyers and began to get to grips with some of its cultural difficulties in the wake of its transatlantic merger with Rogers & Wells.

What would be your dream scoop? The best scoops are often so surprising, you don't see them coming.

But a scandal involving corruption that brought down the government, tied to an Enron-style corporate meltdown, would be close.

Not that it could ever happen, obviously.

What is the most important issue(s) facing the profession? For all kinds of lawyers, I think it is maintaining integrity and the public's trust at a time when lawyers are trying to run their practices much more along the lines of corporations, while professional regulation, legal privilege, conflicts of interest, money laundering regulations and public funding are all in the spotlight.

What pleases/irritates you about lawyers? It's great fun dealing with some of the cleverest and most opinionated people.

But they can also be unbearably pedantic, over-cautious and rarely agree on anything.

If not law, what would you like to write about? My passions are fly-fishing and horses, and I always enjoy the odd chance to write about either.

But it's a small market!

Frances Gibb

The Times

Career: Read English at University of East Anglia (1970-73); researcher at 'Visnews' (1974); trainee reporter, Times Higher Education Supplement (1974-78); art sales correspondent, Daily Telegraph (1978-80); general reporter, The Times (1980-82); legal correspondent (1982-2000); legal editor 2000-present.

Bar Council legal journalist of the year, 1994; special award for Law section (Bar Council awards), 2002.

MA Open University (honorary), 2001; visiting professor of legal journalism, Queen Mary College, London, 2003.

Best scoop: Scoops in this field usually don't have the impact of, say, political exclusives.

But I suppose the one of mine that may have had had most resonance was an interview with Derry Irvine, the last Lord Chancellor, in which it emerged he'd compared himself with Cardinal Wolsey.

I don't think he ever quite shook off the label.

What would be your dream scoop? One that would reverberate worldwide - that the Queen was going to abdicate, perhaps.

In the legal sphere, that Cherie Booth QC was going to be the next Lord Chancellor.

What is the most important issue(s) facing the profession? The future of legal aid and publicly funded legal services; plus, of course, the Clementi review - it will affect how all legal services are provided - and the reforms in the Constitu-tional Reform Bill.

What pleases/irritates you about lawyers? Generally, they're intelligent and interesting, and care about obtaining justice for people and defending fundamental rights.

But they can also be arrogant, opinionated, and unbelievably pompous.

If not law, what would you like to write about? If I wanted a bigger job than law, then home affairs or education.

But probably something totally different.

Perhaps not the 'Bizarre' column in the Sun - but the arts would be a fascinating area to cover.

Joshua Rozenberg

Daily Telegraph

Career: Joshua Rozenberg joined the Daily Telegraph as legal editor in 2000 and now writes a weekly column on the law.

Before going into print, he spent 25 years working at the BBC, the last 15 of these covering legal affairs for 'BBC News'.

He qualified as a solicitor in 1976 after taking a law degree at Oxford and is an honorary bencher of Gray's Inn.

His most recent book is Privacy and the Press (OUP, 2004).

What was your best scoop? The most recent was 'Harman and her sister in case papers blunder', published on 24 March.

'A campaigning solicitor who handed sensitive family court papers to her sister, the Solicitor-General Harriet Harman, has apologised after a judge said she was in contempt of court.'

What would be your dream scoop? An interview with Lord Irvine telling me how David Blunkett got him sacked as Lord Chancellor last June.

But I would settle for an interview with Lord Irvine in which he tells me anything at all.

What is the most important issue(s) facing the profession? Whether the government's planned constitutional reforms will reduce the power of the judges and so make it harder for lawyers to get justice for their clients.

What pleases you about lawyers? When they are confident enough to tell me what's expected to happen in court.

What irritates you about lawyers? When they are too nervous or too arrogant to return my calls.

What would I like to write about, if not law? Myself.

Robert Verkaik

The Independent

Career: Educated at Harvey Grammar School, Folkestone, Kent, followed by a law degree at the Polytechnic of Central London.

1988 to 1991, reporter with London and Essex Guardian Newspapers - Waltham Forest Guardian, Loughton Gazette and Harlow Citizen.

1991-94, court reporter for Fleetline News, covering the High Court, Crown Court and coroners' courts.

1992-93, Inns of Court School of Law bar vocational exams.

It has taken me 11 years to eat all my dinners, but I hope to be finally called to the bar later this year.

1992-1999, freelance writer for national newspapers and magazines on a range of subjects including the law.

During this time, I also worked part-time as the City correspondent of the Gazette.

1999, legal affairs correspondent of The Independent.

Named Bar Council legal journalist of the year in 2002.

Best scoop? I've had a few, but too few to mention.

What would be your dream scoop? Tony Blair sacks his Lord Chancellor then abolishes the post altogether.

In the fallout, he creates a supreme court and a judicial appointments commission.

What is the most important issue(s) facing the profession? Regulation, regulation, regulation.

The profession also needs to do more to support women solicitors so that they are as well represented at partnership level as they are at law school.

What pleases you about lawyers? The lawyers I find the most likeable are those who are about to be exposed in some terrible scandal but still find the time to pick up the phone and answer my questions.

What irritates you about lawyers? Their over-use and often misunderstanding of the term client confidentiality.

If not law, what would you like to write about? Archaeology or military history.

Clare Dyer:

The Guardian

Career: Qualified as a solicitor in 1978.

Parliamentary liaison officer, the Law Society, 1978-81.

Freelance journalist 1981-87.

Legal correspondent, The Guardian, 1987-present.

Legal correspondent British Medical Journal (part-time) 1985-present.

What was your best scoop? No one scoop stands out.

Among the top are Diane Blood's bid to use her dead husband's sperm (print media scoop shared with Joshua Rozenberg, then BBC); the Hillsborough football ground disaster victim in a persistent vegetative state who woke up; and the case of Ms B, the paralysed woman who went to court for the right to die.

What would be your dream scoop? Monarchy to be abolished.

What is the most important issue(s) facing the profession? Getting a grip on complaints against solicitors.

What pleases/irritates you about lawyers? I'm pleased that lawyers are reasonably accessible and happy to talk.

Most of them are a pleasure to deal with.

I wish they would give us a bit more advance notice when cases or judgments are coming up.

The most infuriating thing is having to go through a PR person who doesn't know anything about the law, can't answer questions and seems to perform no useful function.

If I can't get through to the organ grinder, I won't bother.

The most annoying incident recently was dealing with a PR person for a Scottish law firm who could not confirm or deny they were acting for a particular client, even though they were on the record as representing him.

If not law, what would you like to write about? New advances in medicine.