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In our professional capacity it's not really for lawyers to be for or against Brexit per se. In legal terms the Brexit process itself is exceptionally complicated and its impact therefore is unknown, particularly when compounded by devolution and its potential to unleash an unplanned expansion differing regulations within the UK.

Ultimately the success of Brexit depends on the UK politicians' ability to negotiate a new international (and intranational) bureaucracy which is more likely to deliver benefit to the UK populace than the current structure. We are lawyers and therefore can't be seduced (in our professional capacity) either by the siren calls of "sovereignty" or the attractiveness of London Luvvies. We have to be ruthlessly pragmatic.

Whether one trusts the competence of this particular mob of politicians to deliver a decent outcome, after an assessment of the task at hand, is a matter of one's own personal politics. Of course lawyers should be reluctant to "speak out" about politics, they should only do so in a professional capacity when politicians interfere in those areas where an individual lawyer has a direct professional competence.

The truth is that only a few of us work directly in EU related matters, and so for many of us expressing a pro or anti view would simply expressing trust in a set of politicians or ideologies - our political views.

I am not sure whether I am completely in agreement with Jeffrey Shaw or the polar opposite, but I suspect the former.

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