I read with that depressing mixture of indignation and despair the comments various august parties have made to the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee regarding gaps in advice provision for civil legal aid (see [2004] Gazette, 26 February, 3).

I anticipate that these feelings are shared by every legal aid practitioner.

There is undoubtedly a problem with matter starts.

I wish that were the only problem.

I am a matrimonial partner in a three-partner high street firm in the New Forest.

I have almost 30 years' experience in family law.

I am a member of the advanced family law panel and am cursed by having a social conscience, which means that I remain extremely reluctant to give up publicly funded work.

However, I could be tipped over the edge.

We read that Philip Ely - the Legal Services Commission (LSC) chairman - is 'far from apologetic' about bureaucracy in the public funding system.

Clearly he cannot be aware of how the bureaucratic demands work out in practice.

I have little confidence that the system will improve.

We are condemned to deal with the grotesquely inefficient and inept administration that is the LSC.

My practice used to deal with the Reading office.

Its standard of service deteriorated from inadequate to pitiful.

The solution was for the LSC to send all of our public funding applications to Newcastle.

After a window of about one week, when we were given prompt and efficient service, Newcastle's performance in general is such that I now hanker after the days of dealing with the Reading office.

If we offered the level of 'service' that the LSC offers to us, then it would be entitled to withdraw our contract.

Sadly, we have no similar get-out clause.

If I am to continue to exercise my social conscience, I have no alternative other than to put up with the frustration of trying to give a first-rate service to clients that is administered by a second-rate agency while being paid third-world rates for the privilege.

I would find it hard to withdraw from publicly funded work.

It would mean abandoning a section of society that may well need our help the most.

The LSC appears content to rely on our goodwill.

I would like the message to go out to the LSC that it is almost exhausted.

The dentists seem to have managed to shake the government out of its complacent attitude - cannot lawyers act as a unified body and do likewise?

Suzanne Sutherland, Scott Bailey, Lymington