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Since the formation of the NHS led to free access to medical treatment the medical profession has traditionally occupied the moral high ground.

Even during the happy years of generally available legal aid, lawyers remained unpopular with everybody, and consequently became the Billy-no-mates of the professions.

I’m not sure that will ever change. We are elitist, arrogant, obscurantist, pedantic unwelcoming, unsympathetic realists who have to pay our own bills.

No MP’s want to tour our offices with droves of reporters, and certainly the prospect of a young lawyer being struck off for egregious negligence moves the public to no shows of generous sympathy.

But, as Nietzsche observed about adversity, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.