The Bar has long been notoriously sniffy about the recruitment of solicitors to the Bench; and it seems that the judiciary feels much the same. In his speech to the Bar Conference, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, who is the most liberal barrister – sorry, judge – around, was in fine form.
“Justice in this country is founded upon an independent high-quality judiciary, recruited primarily from an independent Bar,” he said. “You cannot sever the quality of our judiciary from the quality of the Bar… with a barrister, what you see is what you get.”
