Thirty years ago, when I started at the Bar, the middle-aged gentlemen who regularly appeared at Aylesbury Quarter Sessions and Bedford Assizes, and also equally regularly refused admittance to the robing rooms to even the senior partners of their instructing solicitors, would have been horrified to have thought that advocacy could ever be thought of as a business.Happily times have very much changed.

Increasingly we must all recognise the importance of responding to the needs and aspirations of the lay client.

Sometimes, undoubtedly, those needs will best be met by a solicitor advocate - certainly in the magistrates' court, frequently in the county court, occasionally in the Crown Court, rarely in the High Court.So long as we are prepared to change our working practices to accommodate the demands of an increasingly consumer-orientated business, and to incorporate modern management, administrative and marketing techniques into the ways we operate I have no doubt that the independent Bar will survive and flourish.

It may well be smaller.

It may well move into new areas of work.

But flourish it will, for the vital thing to remember is that advocacy is not merely a business.

It is in fact a highly specialised art form, where constant practice is the secret of success.Specialisation is very much the name of the game for the future of legal services.

Only a specialist referral advocacy profession, such as the Bar, can provide the quality of advocacy service which the client will demand and deserve.Martin Bowley QC.The introduction of higher court rights for solicitors will result in fundamental changes in the provision of legal services, even though the doors of the robing rooms have not yet been flattened before an invading army of solicitor advocates.The system we now have, with solicitors, barristers and solicitors with higher court rights (crypto-barristers) whilst welcomed by solicitor advocates, has created a complicated muddle.The client needs a clever advocate presenting a well-prepared case.

As well as advocacy skills, the presenter needs experience as a preparer.

What is the simple solution? We all start as preparers and those who turn out to be good advocates transfer to an independent Bar.

Patently, the simpler the system, the more likely it is to work predictably and well.In London, freelance solicitor advocates are undertaking much work in the magistrates' court.

Often referred to as 'The new Bar', they emerged in response to a demand.

They provide manifest evidence that there is a call for an alternative to the Bar as it is now and that solicitors can answer it.Some members of the Bar feel endangered by this trend and have extrapolated this fear to their role in the Crown Court, but competition from solicitor advocates is far from threatening for a healthy modern Bar if it results in the changes I suggest.

In the commercial world it is not unknown for deregulation to decrease cost, increase efficiency and, crucially, increase demand.

If the Bar accepts the necessity for young advocates to train and practise in solicitors' offices, recognises that there will always be a need for a specialist independent Bar to carry out work at a higher level and welcomes solicitor advocates to it, then we can still be friends with the Bar, indeed we can be closer than in the past.Julia Holman.