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As a professional McKenzie friend, I don't consider how much better off my client and the court would be if only everybody, including my client could afford a solicitor or a barrister. I look at how much worse off the court is, with my client cross-examining witnesses or delivering a skeleton argument, compared to my being allowed to help him actively.

There are McKenzie friends who are absolutely awful. But the general public know that there are also solicitors and barristers who are absolutely awful too, however learned. And there are some litigants for whom it is too much to ask of them, to speak for themselves, when they have sitting next to them somebody who knows the the law and the CPR, and has a track record as a successful litigant in person, who is restricted to passing them scribbled notes.

Giving McKenzie's audience should be the norm, when that is what the litigant wants and it serves the Overriding Objective of CPR to do so. The only sensible approach is to give any McKenzie an opportunity to apply orally for permission to represent his client, and if he does that well, to let him have audience, until such time as the judge or master has reason to think that the Overriding Objective requires him to withdraw the McKenzie's audience.

The Overriding Objective is not supposed to consist of maintaining a monopoly for a privileged few, and inequality of arms between the rich and the poor of the land. It has to do entirely with justice and efficiency.

http://JohnAllman.UK