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I am a barrister not practising in commercial law. I recently went through a divorce which, fortunately for me, did not end up in a court hearing.

My legal costs were out of all proportion to the value I got. Frankly I was amazed at how ineffectual my lawyers were. I expected them to help advise me on how to settle (everyone agreed at the outset that that was what we were trying to do).

I got so frustrated at their failure to come up with something - anything at all - that in the end I carried on instructing them.

As the months dragged by and the costs mounted it became increasingly clear that I carried on instructing my lawyers even though they were crap. In the end I was helped by my family (not my lawyers) to reach a settlement.

All in all I could have spent half of what I did and reached the same conclusion in under half the time if I'd instructed someone who knew what they were doing. Instead, I stuck with my ineffectual, incompetent solicitors to the bitter end and then came on here to moan about things as if I had no role in creating the situation in the first place.