I am a sole practitioner and higher rights advocate on crime and motoring. I read with interest the various letters and articles with regard to virtual files, laptops in court and the ‘real progress’ that is being made. For example, signing up for secure email.

I wonder if the Law Society or the Legal Services Commission have given any thought to the fact that there still remains a substantial backbone (battered but as yet unbroken) of older criminal practitioners, who persist and subsist on legal aid rates, but are not necessarily skilled in the dark arts of computers. I am such a specimen. I have never touched a computer. I use a fountain pen and a pocket watch. I hope next year to obtain my 40th practising certificate (this year’s online one has taken six months to achieve).

There must be many older practitioners who will not for one minute relish the prospect of taking a laptop in their briefcase to the court, the cells, the police station or to prison. How will they convert the older hands?

R McVeighty, Birmingham