Lawyers may be heartily bashed here in the UK – a state of affairs to which The Diary likes to feel he has made his own small contribution – but it is nothing to the battering they get in the US.

According to a nationwide poll of 1,000 Americans carried out by Columbia Law School earlier this year, just under half of respondents believed lawyers did “more harm than good” in pursuing commercial lawsuits and four out of 10 believed they were “dishonest” in their dealings with clients.