In answer to John Hawes' appeal for suggestions (see [2003] Gazette, 27 November, 14), might I suggest simply that we stop all this silly inverse snobbery and just use the Latin where it is simpler, easier and clearer to do so?

Obviously it is different if a lawyer is talking to a layman, but when lawyers are addressing one another it is not sensible to expect that their entire meaning should be obvious to the hypothetical layman who is apparently assumed to be listening in, and who is also now apparently assumed to have had no classical education.

You would not expect a lawyer to understand what two computer engineers are saying when they talk to each other, or two heart-surgeons, or even two accountants.

Why then should lawyers be the only ones forbidden to use their own terms of art?

Peter Bolwell, solicitor with the Crown Prosecution Service