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I am a solicitor and once forgot I had my pen-knife in my pocket until I arrived at Leeds Combined Court Centre. I volunteered that I had it and the security officer explained that they had to confiscate it (which he did) and he gave me a leaflet regarding the Terrorism Act explaining the procedure for reclaiming it (i.e. sending in a letter describing the item and they would return it to me through the post - which I had delivered to my home address rather than have the embarrassment of it delivered to my offices in the DX!). For other offending items they apparently just keep them in a box at the entrance and you can collect them on the way out, but knives are a special case. Anyway, the point of all this is, no-one regarded me as a threat to anyone, and the security staff understood the issue and dealt with me in a fair manner. I was not rude, they were not rude. There does seem to be a problem with the attitude of some security staff, but there is also a problem with some lawyers treating security like something scraped from the sole of their shoe.