I am finding it really hard to understand the views of Professors Paul Grout and James Dow (see [2005] Gazette, 22 September, 1).

Perhaps I have a different view from Prof Grout about what is the core value of acting professionally. My understanding is that it means putting the client's interests before one's own or anybody else's. If that is correct, then it is inevitable that there is a potential conflict of interest for a non-owner managing lawyer between his employer's interests and those of his client. He cannot properly serve two masters. One only has to look at the problems encountered by insurance advisers and estate agents to see this - not to mention the Enron affair.


I agree with Prof Dow that there is insufficient appreciation of the conflicts of interest that currently confront lawyers, where there are incentives to sacrifice quality and ethics for short-term gains. That is what you get if the balance between law as a business and law as a vocation is distorted by the market towards such developments as ever-larger firms, claims farming and factory conveyancing.


The arguments in the Clementi report, and of these academics, seem out of touch with the world of lawyers who work at what one might call the 'human rights' end of the legal spectrum, where much of what we do is precisely protecting the individual from exploitation by big business.


The idea of big business owning its victims' lawyers is not just nonsensical, it is totally unacceptable.


Peter Browne, solicitor, Bristol