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Before my retirement as a solicitor, one of my greatest fears in litigation was the risk of encountering a condition in the Judiciary which was known universally as 'Judgitis'. Recent events, including Jackson and Mitchell, lead me to venture this condition has become significantly more acute and more damaging to the relentless quest for justice which is central to the professional life of every good lawyer. Add in a few ignorant, dogmatic and obsessive politicians and we end up precisely where we are now. I have just spent a 5 day course in (non-legal) skills with a retired dentist, a retired naval officer and a former civil servant who now works for the World Bank and who is also a part time Minister in the Church of Scotland, and none of them gave a damn about unrepresented defendants facing trial on serious fraud charges. In fact I have yet to find anyone outside the legal profession who gives a damn about any such problems (save for a manager of a CAB office who is deeply deeply worried). The reality is that almost no-one outside the legal profession is even remotely interested and that will not change until the profession finds a truly effective and collective voice or until someone suffers in a really serious way and the media are prepared to make an issue of it