With the season of work experience students upon us, I am very glad that we have accepted few applicants this year. I am sure they are enthusiastic young things who just want to ‘help people’, but I would be curmudgeonly enough to advise them not to bother with the legal profession in that case.

The profession seems to no longer be about ‘helping people’ - it is about ‘providing a cost-effective customer service’. The ability to do even this is being hamstrung by big companies which can do it cheaper, lenders which are helping their own profits, a regulatory body which would rather we never did anything at all, and clients who want more service for less money. No, I will be telling anyone who asks me for careers advice to go and do something else with their lives. This career choice really is no longer worth the student debt and resulting worry, risk and lack of sleep.

And in case my ‘it’s not like the old days’ tirade means that I’m coming across as a bitter, old buffer who is nearing retirement. I’m 35.

Marcella King, MacNamara King, Warwick