I received a poor service from my local library the other day. The woman in there was a bit abrupt and sent me to the wrong section as I searched for something to hold up on the Tube to prove how intellectual I was.

I declined to complain at the time because I have a much better idea. I’m going to stand outside the library tomorrow with a megaphone, telling everyone how bad she is.

‘Susan is an idiot,’ I will scream. ‘She can’t even name all three Bronte sisters. She thinks Jordan actually writes her own books. In fact, I am so incandescent and hyperbolic that I will liken her to the devil, such is her ineptitude and inanity.’

I could go down official channels and complain to her employer, but why waste time doing things properly when I can shout from the rooftops? I don’t even need evidence of her malpractice, just a will to destroy this woman in the eyes of anyone who will listen to me.

Contributors to Rick Kordowski’s Solicitors from Hell website replace their megaphone with a keyboard and remain anonymous, but in many ways their postings can be as foolhardy and dangerous as my rantings at the poor librarian (and just for the record, my local librarian is neither an idiot nor called Susan).

Let’s get this straight: some solicitors are not very good at their job. The odd bad apple is careless, corrupt and even criminal.

But the vast, vast majority are honest and highly-skilled practitioners, respected in their community and sullied by a guilty few in their profession. As a journalist, I can empathise only too easily.

Complaints will always be common against solicitors, because there is so often just one winner. The loser needs a scapegoat, and who better than the (sometimes) well-paid brief who cost them the case?

But how can the Solicitors from Hell website justify the way it operates?

It is not a public service; this is a public humiliation. It is a chance to gawp and cackle as complainants throw rotten fruit at lawyers confined to the stocks, with no possibility of escape. Solicitors are given a right of reply, but only after the comments have been published.

There may well be those who feel ill-served by the complaints service, and clients are entitled to vent their anger if they feel their protest is not being taken seriously. But there are official channels for this, ones which do not potentially ruin a firm’s reputation without proper grounds.

The Law Society intends to bring legal action against the website owner, its chief executive Desmond Hudson describing the site on Radio Four this week as ‘littered’ with abusive comments.

Critics will file this move under the ‘they would say that wouldn’t they’ banner, and it’s true the Law Society must be careful not to appear unwilling to accept solicitors’ failings.

But on this occasion it is clearly right to make a stand and defend its members. Solicitors are already accountable and subject to scrutiny. If the public wants that scrutiny increased, by all means let’s improve that system quickly and fairly; and indeed the relatively new Legal Ombudsman is a positive step in that direction.

Solicitors may not be the most popular professionals in this country, but they don’t deserve this public and unreasonable flogging from Solicitors from Hell.