We are not sausage machinists

I note that your interviewee in a recent 'Lawyer in the News' feature (see [2000] Gazette, 5 May, 12) sympathises with the notion that a criminal lawyer would have dealt with Tony Martin's case as a 'sausage-machine case'.Is he or his client implying that an especially demanding case is best dealt with by a practitioner outside that field, on the basis that a specialist will provide an inferior service? If so, he is blatantly not aware of the trend within the profession among firms to specialise in particular areas.

Applying his logic, a client wishing to sell, say, a Jacobean manor for a large sum should instruct, for example, a criminal practitioner who would tackle the work properly, rather than a conveyancer who would treat it as a sausage-machine case.I am a criminal practitioner working in a three-partner firm in Portsmouth.

We treat none of our clients as sausage-machine cases, least of all those charged with murder.

Hugh Darnley-Smith, The Keeler West Partnership, Portsmouth