The legal profession, usually ignored by Whitehall, finds itself currently the stuff of political debate, mostly for negative reasons. Last week the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) unveiled its long-awaited policies on reforming civil litigation costs in a minor blaze of publicity about ambulance-chasing lawyers.
Within days, that typical hotbed of tabloid controversy – The Law Society’s annual statistical report – was enough to start a half-baked debate about the number of fat-cat lawyers exceeding those of police officers, supposedly off the back of the twin growth engines of legal aid and the Human Rights Act.
