With Solicitors able to become solicitor-advocates and with barristers being able to register as direct access and being granted the right to conduct litigation, one could argue that there is virtually no difference anymore between the two professions – except, of course, that each has its own professional membership and regulatory body to protect their members’ interests.
Somewhere in the last few decades, we have gone terribly wrong. The profession has got confused about what its function is. Our duty is to the prospective client, or the ‘consumer’ as we now tend categorise them, rather than to internalise everything for the betterment of our own profession, or to increase our profit margins and commercialise what we do
