I had a turbulent seven-year relationship with my old English teacher.

He had a pompous air of superiority, talking to pupils like Mr Bumble addressing the orphans and wistfully dreaming of the university professorship he surely craved but never achieved.

Worst of all, he also dropped me from the school cricket team, foolishly favouring talent over enthusiasm in his selection policy.

I imagine he wasn’t my biggest fan either.

Always with a smart retort, I probably spent more time banished from the classroom than sitting inside it.

And I couldn’t even halve my punishment with a guilty plea.

All of which made it a blessed relief that he wasn’t marking my A-level English paper (although he did his best to distract me with that ‘exam hall walk’ teachers seem to revel in).

Whatever our mutual antagonism, my future was in my hands, free from the burdens of bias or past conflicts.

Solicitor-advocates are not so lucky.

Their futures are being placed in the hands of the judiciary in the form of compulsory evaluations in the Quality Assurance Scheme for criminal law advocates.

Two caveats from the start: I have no problem whatsoever with testing a professional’s competence.

A certificate gained at 25 does not make you qualified to practice 40 years later and some form of assessment is essential.

Neither is this a slight against the judges or an assumption they are not capable of evaluating an advocate fairly.

Nevertheless, it cannot be right that the judiciary have to sit in judgment not only of a case, but of the practitioners arguing in front of them.

Who would risk standing up to their potential executioner, moments before they are due to decide your fate?

As many have argued, the advocate’s priority has to be defending his client, even if that means upsetting the benches or standing their ground.

Will we see solicitor-advocates foregoing their duty to gain merit points with their assessor? I hope not, but you couldn’t rule it out.

And what of the judges? Sitting with their finger on the trigger like a courtroom version of Simon Cowell, they will be loaded with extra work on top of their existing duties and required to sit through an arduous procession of box-ticking and assessment.

Who is to say that after a long session in court, a judge is willing or able to then evaluate the advocate?

The likelihood of mistakes, either through a competent advocate being unfairly downgraded or a weak practitioner slipping through the net, cannot sit comfortably with anyone concerned for the well-being of the profession.

What I would suggest is needed is an independent, trained arbiter who can sit in court and assess the performance of advocates – a sort of legal Ofsted.

It would be ludicrous to ask pupils to assess their teachers (my English teacher would have been in serious trouble); instead they bring in experts who know how to properly evaluate people.

If we must insist that practitioners prove themselves in practical situations, at least let them have the peace of mind to carry out their jobs without fear of judicial reprisal.

I don’t want judges to sit in judgment over solicitor-advocates, contemplating whether to give the thumbs up or down in the style of a Roman emperor.

More importantly, I suspect most judges and solicitor-advocates don’t want this system either.