Your editorial on the growing number of law students is well timed (see [2007] Gazette, 31 May, 16).


I attended a recent Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) roadshow in Lincoln and asked a question on the likely effect of the proposals for revised training on the number of entrants to the profession, bearing in mind the increase in numbers on the roll from 26,000 in 1973 to over 100,000 now. I suggested that rate of expansion could not continue.



The response I received was alarming. I was told the SRA could envisage newly-qualified solicitors being employed to carry out work now undertaken by paralegals (presumably on paralegal salaries?) and the market would deal with the consequences.



Quite apart from appearing to take a frighteningly similar approach to the ill-conceived legal aid 'reforms', what incentive does the SRA believe existing paralegals will have to avail themselves of the new route to qualification if that will not, in practice, allow them to do the work of a solicitor and be remunerated appropriately for doing so?



Such a scenario serves merely to diminish solicitors' professional status and gives succour to those, in government and elsewhere, who demand quality advice whilst paying peanuts.



Stephen Mannering, Sheltons Solicitors, Nottingham